University of Virginia Library

I

EDGAR ALLAN POE

THE University of Virginia has nothing
with which to reproach herself in her
treatment of Edgar Allan Poe. Through ill
report and good he was followed with her maternal
solicitude and misgivings, but never with
her reproof or wrath. In his college days she
may have been too lenient, but in the days of
his fame she is not constrained by any hobgoblin
of consistency to withhold her praise. She
has, therefore, had peculiar pride in witnessing
his universal acclaim as a man of genius and as
a singularly forceful agency in compelling international
recognition of our American literature.
Her anxiety is no longer lest he be not
recognized at his real worth, but lest, in the
ardor of revived enthusiasm, his real merit,
however high, be overrated and his rightful
place, so tardily won, jeopardized by claims too
sweeping and superlative.

The celebration of the Poe centenary at the
University of Virginia has served, however, as
a corrective: first, of the persistent misstatements
of his earlier biographers, and then of
the unsettled or adverse judgment of his literary
rank.

Edgar Allan Poe entered the University on
the fourteenth of February, 1826, and did not
leave until the twentieth of December. By the
way, the many errors and uncertainties as to
Poe's stay at the University are due to a misunderstanding
of the period covered by the
session of 1826. It began on the first of
February and continued without break or holiday
to the fifteenth of December, so that instead
of leaving during the session, as has
been asserted in various forms of ignorance or
malignity, he was in the University from two
weeks after the session opened until five days
after the session closed. Nor was he disciplined
by suspension, expulsion, personal
reprimand, or in any other way during that
long session. He did fall once under suspicion
of misconduct, but in that particular case was
innocent.

His career was not entirely calm and placid

in that stormy session, but notwithstanding
alleged irregularities he was commended for
Italian translation, reported among the
"passed" in Latin and French, and, in addition,
was known to the librarian as a free reader of
good books, to his fellow-students as a gifted
author of undergraduate tales never published,
and probably of poems afterwards published
in the volume of 1827. Among those who
applauded his achievements, yet deplored the
errancies of his later life, were his brother
alumni; and in that small company of sincere
mourners who followed his storm-tossed and
wrecked body to its humble grave were representatives
of his alma mater.

When the semi-centennial of his death
came, the University of Virginia unveiled, with
services so significant as to attract the attention
of the cultivated world, the Zolnay bust
of Poe, the most striking and satisfactory
artistic representation of the poet extant.[1]
Through this successful and significant celebration
the University of Virginia's connection

with Poe became so widely known that as the
centennial of his birth approached, it was
taken for granted by the foreign and domestic
press that the supreme appreciation of this
noted event would be shown at this University.
That these high expectations might not be
disappointed, the President of the University
of Virginia appointed a committee to provide
for some adequate recognition of the centenary.
The committee, consisting of Charles
W. Kent, James A. Harrison, and William H.
Faulkner, with the hearty support of the
Faculty, students, community, and especially
the President, arranged the programme set
forth in this volume officially sanctioned.

In this book no record can be made of the
brilliancy or enthusiasm of the audiences, no
representation of the spectacular features of
the entertainment, but the substantial contributions
to Poe criticism and the distinct acknowledgement
of Poe's far-sweeping fame are here
presented to the public with grateful thanks to
all who by participation or presence did honor
to Poe's memory, and with a solemn sense of
chastened but lasting joy that our great
alumnus has at last come so fully to his own.