Who was the literary executor of Edgar Allan Poe's works who also libeled him?

The literary executor associated with Poe’s works who also libeled him was Rufus Griswold.

Rufus Wilmot Griswold was an anthologist, editor, and critic who had known Poe through America’s literary magazine world. After Poe’s death in 1849, Griswold claimed that Poe had chosen him as literary executor. Alongside James Russell Lowell and Nathaniel Parker Willis, he helped edit a posthumous collection of Poe’s writings.

Griswold also wrote the notorious “Memoir of the Author,” which portrayed Poe as chronically drunken, unstable, and morally disreputable. Later biographers and Poe scholars found that the account contained serious distortions, fabricated evidence, and material shaped by Griswold’s personal hostility toward Poe.

The two men had clashed over literary criticism, editorial positions, and Poe’s judgments of Griswold’s anthologies. Griswold had succeeded Poe as editor of Graham’s Magazine, receiving higher pay and greater editorial authority. Because Griswold’s biography influenced Poe’s reputation for decades, his name became closely linked with the hostile “Poe myth” that modern scholarship has worked to correct. The executor claim itself is also historically disputed, but Griswold is the canonical answer to this quiz question.