Philly, in all its tumbling mess of democracy, strife, toil and glory, is the kind of place where the greatest American writer needed to be, to hone his vision, to perfect his craft.

This is a literary grave-robbing. On Sunday, Oct. 7, Edgar Allan Poe will have been dead for 158 years. His critical reputation has waxed and waned, and there have been many generic claims for Poe's works.

In the fall of 1844, a young Philadelphia journalist, George Lippard, began a weekly serial in one of the city's penny newspapers. The story, titled The Quaker City; or, the Monks of Monk Hall, was such a hit that the 10 serial installments were bound together and 48,000 copies sold the following year.