Keywords for Unusual Cards

Postcard of The Premature Burial by Antoine Wiertz

Edgar Allan Poe inspired the premature burial theme, (Short story, The Premature Burial, Madeleine in The Fall of The House Of Usher, and Fortunato in The Cask Of Amontillado.) Mister Poe was deceased for five years by the time this painting appeared. Wiertz, Poe and Lautreamont were working about the same time with a common obsession with extreme states of Consciousness, manifest in romanticised imagery of menacing, grotesque, violent, erotic and tragic proportions.