HISTORIC+RURAL CHARACTER

updated January 12, 2009
Some fair readers may have heard of "The Southern Literary Messenger", the waggish seat of literary magistry printing pressed in Richmond, that graced Virginia and the United States with its flowery prose and canted attitudes. But would you believe this text calling for historic preservation in Virginia was written in 1857?

Strangely prescient, the preface to an unsigned submission on Henrico and her history touches on an issue unchanged by the passage of over 150 years. Linking the need for historic preservation to Henrico is a longstanding past-time, undertaken by historians and authors through the ages. Douglas Southall Freeman did his part to ensure many a battlefield was marked, and we at HV include history among the many concerns passed over by Henrico County's current Comprehensive Planning process.

Sent in by a reader still concerned about what we have to lose in Henrico, the above work shows while Yorktown and Jamestown have become internationally known destinations for tourists and scholars alike, our historic and beautiful county has gone mostly unpreserved- our historic sites and agricultural heritage remain unprotected.

"The Southern Literary Messenger was the most important periodical published in the South and, in spite of occasional troubles, one of the most successful. It was for this magazine that Poe first launched what was to be a lifelong career as an editor and magazinist." (learn more)

The issue of the Southern Literary Messenger that included the Henrico piece above also published Edgar Allen Poe's 'The Raven'...We need not add to Shakespeare's allusion aptly emplyed by the Messenger to depict the ravages man and nature continue to wreak on

"HENRICO COUNTY.
PREFACE.

" Ingratitude is monstrous; and for the multitude to be ungrateful, were to make a monster of the multitude."—SHAKESPEARE.

"Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind
As man's Ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude."

[SHAKESPEARE]."

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Join the Celebration of Poe's 200th Birthday this week in libraries, darkened garrets, dingy shothouses and cold gutters all over the world by checking out the "The Edgar Allan Poe Bicentennial" blog- celebrating 200 Years of Poe's Life & Work, and featuring specific events in Richmond and Petersburg, and including

• Poe Bicentennial Events
• Tour of Poe: The Fiction
• Images of Poe
• News on the new Edgar Allen Poe-stage Stamp

(The stamp should be available in your local Poe-st Office by January 16th.) awful poe-st

Historic + Rural Character is under construction, check back soon...