When and where was "The Raven" first published?

Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" was first published under his own name in the New York Evening Mirror on January 29, 1845 (it had also appeared, credited to the pseudonym "Quarles," in the February 1845 issue of The American Review, which circulated slightly earlier). It was collected in book form later that year in "The Raven and Other Poems" (Wiley & Putnam, November 1845).

What does the raven's refrain "Nevermore" mean?

"Nevermore" is the raven's only word, repeated in answer to every question the grieving narrator puts to it. Poe himself explained the poem's design in his essay "The Philosophy of Composition" (1846): he wanted a single, melancholy refrain capable of endlessly varied application, and settled on a non-reasoning bird trained to speak one word, so that "Nevermore" could shift meaning with each question asked of it, driving the narrator's grief for his lost Lenore toward despair and self-torment.

The Raven

Reader reviews of The Raven

paige 🦇 · 2026-08-26T00:11:53.000000Z

Wow. Just wow. I genuinely can’t believe I’d never actually read *The Raven* in its entirety before. I knew the famous lines, I knew the general premise, I knew the imagery, but experiencing the whole poem is something else entirely. It’s haunting, melancholic and almost hypnotic. The repetition, the rhythm, the descent into grief and obsession. It all builds into something so much darker than I expected. Poe somehow makes the poem feel both beautiful and deeply unsettling, like you’re watching someone slowly lose their grip on reality. I finished it and immediately thought: **wow.** This edition also included two bonus chapters of Mrs. Poe, which was a fun little addition I enjoyed.

Tales and Poems

Classics Poetry

Pages: 352
Published: 1845
Language: English

Synopsis

On a bleak December midnight, a grief-stricken scholar sits alone among his books, half-reading and half-mourning his lost love, Lenore. A tapping at his chamber door gives way to the arrival of a stately raven, which perches above the doorway and answers his every anguished question with a single word: "Nevermore."

As the narrator's questions grow more desperate, the bird's unchanging reply drives him from idle curiosity into torment and despair, until he can no longer tell whether the raven is a prophet, a demon, or a projection of his own breaking mind.

First published in 1845, Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" is one of the most famous poems in the English language, celebrated for its hypnotic meter, internal rhyme, and mounting atmosphere of dread. A compact masterpiece of Gothic verse, it distills grief, memory, and the longing for the dead into a single unforgettable night.

11 reviews