2 thoughts on “Stealing Other People’s Homework: The Origin of Poe’s “Hop-Frog””

  1. EG October 31, 2018 / 1:20 pm

    An underrated and compelling story. Poe was smart to draw his inspiration for “Hop-Frog” from an actual historical event. I know that Shakespeare did this quite a lot as well. E.g., for “Hamlet,” “Macbeth,” etc., usually by consulting contemporaneous medieval chronicles related to whatever the subject was.

    Reply
    • marzaat October 31, 2018 / 5:15 pm

      I can’t think of any other shorter works that Poe used historical material for. You’d have to go with his longer works, “The Journal of Julius Rodman” (Washington Irving’s history of the Northwest Fur Trading Company) and The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (presumably various accounts of actual sea journeys for some of it).

      Reply

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