Hitchcock

Hitchcock is named in the acknowledgments among the real-life personages incorporated into the novel’s fictional enterprise. The author’s historical clarification draws a boundary between the story and the record: no cadets were murdered or seriously injured during Sylvanus Thayer’s tenure, and Edgar Allan Poe, to the author’s knowledge, killed only on paper.

Historical Figure in a Fictional Enterprise

The acknowledgments group Hitchcock with Sylvanus Thayer and Kemble as historical figures who appear in a deliberately fictional narrative. They provide no further biographical detail about Hitchcock or specify his actions in the story, so his significance here is limited to that distinction between historical personage and fictional use.