Stephen Moss, "Ten Birds That Changed the World" has Raven at number one and Emperor Penguin at number ten.
Moss writes about Raven's relationship with Poe:
“…‘Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore”.’ The line comes from one of the best-known of all narrative poems, ‘The Raven’, written by the nineteenth-century American writer, Edgar Allan Poe.48 Published in January 1845, less than five years before Poe died, it is a masterpiece of Gothic literature, whose popularity, even almost 200 years after it was published, has yet to wane; it features in almost every online list of the top ten poems of all time.
With a curiously jaunty, yet strangely ominous, rhythm, ‘The Raven’ tells the story of a man who awakens ‘upon a midnight dreary’ to hear a tapping on his door. The visitor turns out to be a raven which, once it has been let into the room, will utter but a single word: ‘Nevermore’. The largely one-sided dialogue between man and bird continues, with the man getting increasingly angry and disturbed, as he realises that the raven’s constant repetition of the word reminds him of the loss of his lover, Lenore. Gradually he descends into madness, for which he blames the ‘grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous’ bird…”
artist: Charlie Hankin, 2023
