The Oval Portrait is the rhythmical creation of beauty, and that the most poetical topic in the world is the death of a beautiful woman (see "The Philosophy of Composition"). "The Oval Portrait" suggests that the woman's beauty condemns her to death. Poe suggests in the tale that art can reveal the artist's guilt or evil and that the artist feeds on and may even destroy the life he has modeled into art. "The Oval Portrait" was first published as a longer version titled "Life in Death" in "Graham's Magazine" in 1842. "Life in Death" included a few introductory paragraphs explaining how the
1842 Slave Revolt in the Cherokee Nation passed a stricter slave code and required expulsion of free blacks from the territory, as they were considered to foster discontent among slaves. After the American Civil War, planters and the upper class of the Cherokee Nation shifted from plantation agriculture to developing manufacture of small-scale products, which were sold internally, instead of being exported. As a mass escape that resulted in casualties and deaths of both slaves and others, the 1842 slave revolt was widely reported by newspapers. Even 50 years later, when the "Fort Smith Elevator" of Arkansas published an anniversary article about the escape, the account had