8/11/15

Harry Clarke, Upon the bed there lay a nearly liquid mass of loathsome detestable putridity

Illustration for Edgar Allan Poe's "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" by Harry Clarke (1889-1931). Published in 1919.

"The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" is a short story by American author Edgar Allan Poe about a mesmerist who puts a man in a suspended hypnotic state at the moment of death. An example of a tale of suspense and horror, it is also, to a certain degree, a hoax, as it was published without claiming to be fictional, and many at the time of publication (1845) took it to be a factual account. Poe toyed with this for a while before admitting it was a work of pure fiction in his marginalia.

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