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Notes
Cf. Poe's letter to Philip P. Cooke (August 9, 1846) and Poe's letter to George Eveleth (December 15, 1846) in The Letters of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. John W. Ostrom (1948), II, 328, 332. (Hereafter referred to as Letters). Perry Miller (The Raven and the Whale 1956) states that Poe ". . . circulated reports that the selection was made 'by a gentleman whose taste does not coincide with mine.'" (p. 135). The words "circulated reports" are not quite accurate as Poe's unfavorable comments on Duyckinck's selection — which the latter was to hear of only after Poe's death — appear in two private letters addressed to correspondents foreign to the world of the literati. Miller's remark that ". . . again in character, Poe had given Duyckinck carte blanche to select the poems" (p. 135), misses the mark since Poe's comments had not been written until August 9, 1846, more than six months after the publication of The Raven and Other Poems. (Poe's published opinion of the selection, a short anonymous paragraph in the Broadway Journal for July 12, 1845 [II, 10], is non-committal). There is moreover proof that Poe himself was responsible for the selection of the poems (cf. Poe's letter to Duyckinck, September 10, 1845. Letters, I, 297). Thus, there is no indication of a quarrel between Poe and Duyckinck prior to August 9, 1846.
For a list of the first publication of the twelve tales, see: Charles F. Heartman and James R. Canny, A Bibliography of the Writings of Edgar Allan Poe (Hattiesburg, Miss. 1940), p. 63. For the complete list of the previous publications of each tale, see: John C. Wyllie, "A List of the Texts of Poe's Tales" in Humanistic Studies in Honor of John Calvin Metcalf, (University of Virginia Studies I) (1941), 322-338.
Letter from Carey to John P. Kennedy, November 21, 1834: ". . . writing is a very poor business unless a man can find a way of taking the public attention, and that is not often done by short stories. People want something larger and longer," in Killis Campbell, "The Kennedy Papers," Sewanee Review, XXV (April 1917), 197-198. See also, Wiley Harper's letter to Poe: "Readers in this country have a decided and strong preference for works (especially fiction) in which a single and connected story occupies the whole volume, or number of volumes, as the case may be . . ." Quoted in Eugene Exman, The Brothers Harper (1965), p. 80.
A review of Robert M. Bird's Calavar in The Southern Literary Messenger, I (February 1835), 315, Poe's first review in which he tries to answer Sidney Smith's ironical question: "Who reads an American book?"
Cf. Poe's review of Mathews' "Wakondah" in The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. James A. Harrison (1902), XI, 25-38. (Hereafter referred to as Works) and see below p. 30.
In The Raven and the Whale (p. 135), Perry Miller, who assumes that Poe is a Young American, quotes a sentence from the article without identifying the passage.
Cf. the following articles in which he puffs authors published in Duyckinck's "Library of Choice Reading": "The Age of Elisabeth" by William Hazlitt, II, 27-28; "Prose and Verse" by Thomas Hood, ibid., p. 57, 71-74 and 104; "Editorial Miscellany," ibid., pp. 60-61; "Letters from Italy" by J. T. Headley, ibid., p. 75; "The Characters of Shakespeare," by William Hazlitt, ibid., p. 89; "The Indicator and Companion," by Leigh Hunt, ibid., p. 120; "Genius and Character of Burns," by Professor Wilson, ibid., p. 136; "Bubbles from the Brunnen of Nassau, by an Old Man," ibid., pp. 191-192; untitled paragraph about "The Library of American Books," ibid., p. 218; "Big Abel and the Little Manhattan," by Cornelius Mathews, ibid., p. 227; "The Country Papers on American Books," ibid., p. 278; "Editorial Miscellany," ibid., p. 325.
"Simms's Magazine," ibid., p. 121; "The Wigwam and the Cabin," by William G. Simms, ibid., pp. 190-191.
See his many letters to Duyckinck in Mary Simms Oliphant et al., eds., The Letters of William Gilmore Simms, vol. II, passim.
"Orion. An Epic Poem, in Three Books, by R. H. Horne," Graham's Magazine, XXIV (January 1844), 46.
Such opinions as the following are perhaps not so sincere as their enthusiastic tone suggests: "The description of the Hell in 'Paradise Lost' is altogether inferior in graphic effect, in originality, in expression, in the true imagination — to these magnificent, to these unparalleled passages" (Works, XI, 271).
"It was our design to give 'Orion' a careful and methodical analysis — thus to bring clearly forth its multitudinous beauties to the eye of the American public. Our limits have constrained us to treat it in an imperfect and cursory manner. We have had to content ourselves chiefly with assertion, when our original purpose was to demonstrate." (Works, XI, 274-275).
Works, XI, 271. The three lines quoted above are the concluding lines of the passage Poe considers to be superior to the description of the Hell in Paradise Lost.
Cf. Horne to Poe (April 27, 1844): "Mr. Mathews, of New York, had been so good as to inform me there would be a review;" George E. Woodberry, "Poe in New York," Century Magazine, XLVII (n.s. xxvi) (May-October 1894), 858.
See his letter to Charles Anthon (ante November 2, 1844, Letters, I, 266-271; and Anthon to Poe (November 2, 1844), Works, XVII, 193.
An Address to the People of the United States in Behalf of the American Copyright Club (1843), quoted in George T. Goodspeed, "The Home Library," The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, XLII, 110.
Cf. "Authors' Pay in America," New York Weekly Mirror, I (October 12, 1844), 15; "The Pay for Periodical Writing," ibid., I (October 19, 1844), 28; "Pay of American Authors," ibid., I (February 8, 1845), 280; "Pay of Authors in America," ibid., I (February 8, 1845), 288.
Cf. "Subserviency to British Criticism," ibid., I (January 11, 1845), 219. This short paragraph, not previously included in the Poe canon, is evidently his: Poe denounces Christopher North's blunders about Miss Barrett's poetry in the same words he used in his Broadway Journal review of the same date (cf. below pp. 40-41).
"Does the Drama of the Day Deserve Support?", ibid., I (January 18, 1845), 229; "Prospects of the Drama" and "Antigone," Broadway Journal, I (April 5 and 12, 1845), 219-220 and 236-237.
Cf. "Magazine Literature," New York Weekly Mirror, I (February 15, 1845), 299; "Magazine Writing," Broadway Journal, I (June 7, 1845), 354-357.
For a detailed study of the literary theories of the Young Americans, see John Stafford, The Literary Criticism of "Young America" (1952), pp. 54-95 and passim.
New York Weekly Mirror, I (January 25, 1845), 251. On February 8, 1845, Poe bluntly accused the "gentlemen of elegant leisure" of jeopardizing the future of American Democracy among "the people" by disseminating "the monarchical and aristocratical sentiment" of foreign books. ("Pay of American Authors," New York Weekly Mirror, I, 280). It is the most puzzling opinion ever expressed by the author of "Some Words of a Mummy" and other bitter diatribes against democracy.
Longfellow's friend remarked in his letter to the Editor of the New York Mirror: "It has been asked why Lowell was neglected in this collection" (quoted in Works, XII, 42).
See, in particular: "Headley's Letters from Italy," Broadway Journal, II (August 9, 1845), 75; "Mathews' Big Abel and the Little Manhattan," ibid., II (September 27 and October 18, 1845), 177-178 and 227, revised and expanded in Godey's Lady's Book, XXXI (November 1845), 218-219 (Works, XIII, 73-78); "Simms's The Wigwam and the Cabin," Broadway Journal, II (October 4, 1845), 190-191, revised and expanded in Godey's Lady's Book, XXXI (December 1845), 41-43, (Works, XIII, 93-97); "Mathews' Americanism," Broadway Journal, II (November 29, 1845), 322.
Broadway Journal, I (January 4 and 11, 1845), 4-8 and 17-20. (Works, XII, 1-35, from which I quote.)
See, e.g. Louise Greer, Browning and America (1952): (". . . he [Poe] praised her extravagantly in reviews . . ." p. 2). In an article that is not easily available, J.G. Varner offers a more precise story of their relationship. He is, however, more concerned with Miss Barrett's reactions than with Poe's ambiguous attitude. (Four Arts, [Richmond], January-February 1935, pp. 4-5, 14-15 and 17.)
Both Mathews and Duyckinck had compared some passages in Miss Barrett's poems to Dante. See Democratic Review, new series, XV (October 1844), 375, and American Review, I (January 1845), 47.
The two enthusiastic paragraphs in the New York Evening Mirror (October 8 and November 7, 1844) often quoted by Poe's biographers have been proved to be by N. P. Willis (William D. Hull, "A Canon of the Critical Works of Edgar Allan Poe," University of Virginia, unpublished dissertation, pp. 414 and 434.
The collection had been extensively reviewed and even Mathews refused to review once again the poems of his protégée. Cf. letter to R. W. Griswold, Passages from the Correspondence of Rufus W. Griswold, ed. W. M. Griswold (1898), p. 161.
Miss Barrett to Mathews, The Letters of Elizabeth B. Barrett, ed. Frederic G. Kenyon (1897), I, 198.
One may easily surmise the reasons for Mathews' "wonderful kindness" for Miss Barrett. There was first genuine mutual admiration and almost immediate sympathy between them; but, from the very outset it is evident that Mathews expected Miss Barrett to promote his own poems in England (MS. letters of Cornelius Mathews to Elisabeth Barrett Barrett in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York).
Cf. ibid., p. 76. Miss Barrett to Mathews (March 1844). The title of the English edition was merely Poems, 1844, whereas the American edition bore the title of The Drama of Exile and Other Poems.
Mathews to Elizabeth B. Barrett, June 27, 1844. (MS. letter in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, quoted by permission of the trustees).
". . . & I felt it to be a kind as well as honorable concession when a New York bookseller agreed to print in the best type and paper (paying for the privilege) a work which might be snatched out of his hands by the bookseller next door and printed as a tract." David Bonnell Green, "Elizabeth Barrett and R. Shelton Mackenzie," Studies in Bibliography, XIV (1961), 247.
Carey, the Philadelphia publisher who planned to reprint The Drama of Exile and Other Poems after the usual fashion, gave up his project when he learned that ". . . the New York publisher had proof sheets direct from the author" (Letters, ed. Kenyon, I, 177). Of course he had been persuaded to abandon his project by Mathews himself: "Carey and Hart, bookseller, at Philadelphia, had announced to publish your Poems, but on my writing, they relinquish the purpose in favor of a publisher who allows you copy money." (MS. letter from Cornelius Mathews to Elisabeth B. Barrett, June 27, 1844, in the Pierpont Morgan Library, quoted by permission of the trustees).
The following poems by Miss Barrett appeared in the Democratic Review: "A Drama of Exile," New Series XV (July 1844), 74-88, and (August 1844), 142-152; "Work," (September 1844), 249; "Insufficiency," (August 1844), 194.
An announcement followed by a long quotation from Richard H. Horne, Democratic Review, New Series XV (July 1844), 72-73; a long review by Mathews (October 1844), 370-377. That Mathews is the author of the review is proved by his statement in a letter to Griswold that: "I have already said my 'say' of Miss Barrett's poems in the Democratic Review for October . . ." (October 28, 1844, in Griswold's Letters, p. 161).
Duyckinck wrote a laudatory review of the collection for the first number of the apparently hostile American Review, I (January 1845), 38-48. He is identified as the author by Mathews' letter to Griswold of October 28, 1844 from which I have already quoted (cf. Note 70): ". . . and Duyckinck has said his ['say' of Miss Barrett's poems] in the New [American] Whig Review." Though the first number of the American Review bore the date of January 1845, it was advertised to be issued in September 1844, was delayed and was finally published late in October (American Review, I, fly-leaf). Thus Poe who had read the article, which he mentioned twice in his review of Miss Barrett's poems, had learned, if he did not know before, that Mathews was the American editor of the book. To the statement that Miss Barrett's work had been published "under the care of an American author," Duyckinck had convinced the editor, Colton, to append the following note: "Mr. Mathews, to whom Miss Barrett pays a delicate compliment in her preface, and whose volume of Poems she pronounces in another part of her volume as remarkable in thought and manner, for a vital sinewy vigor, as the right arm of the Pathfinder." American Review, I (January 1845), 38. The Democratic papers carry, of course, favorable reviews of Miss Barrett's poems and reprint some of her poems; see, e.g., the New York Morning News, "Poems by Elizabeth B. Barrett — From the Last Westminster Review," (January 25 and 30, 1845); "Opinions of the Press on the Drama of Exile," (January 30 and February 1, 1845); the New York Weekly News, "The Lady's Yes," and "Sleeping and Watching" (January 11 and 25, 1845).
Perry Miller (The Raven and the Whale, p. 127) identifies Duyckinck as the author of this biographical sketch of Jones (signed D.) that appeared in the Broadway Journal, I (January 11, 1845), 26-28.
"The article about Miss Barrett is extremely well written, I suppose by Poe." Letter to Charles F. Briggs, January 16, 1845, in Woodberry, The Life of Edgar Allan Poe (1909), II, 368.
In his Broadway Journal article on William Jones (see note 73), Duyckinck proves that he reads Poe's criticism with interest by inserting the following sentence: "But with all this there was . . . no trace of what Mr. Poe calls American cribbage." Additional proof that Duyckinck had seen Poe's article and, perhaps, censured some of his opinions is to be found in a letter from Briggs to Duyckinck (December 27, 1844): "I enclose you a few lines of a review of your Miss Barrett, which will appear in the first number of my journal [The Broadway Journal, of course] in which I find an Expression that may seem harsh to you. . . . It is meant well I know, from the writer's feelings towards you, but I cannot find him to ask him to substitute something in the place of it which will Express his meaning as well. If you don't approve of the sentence, have the goodness to say so and I will erase it altogether." (Duyckinck Collection, New York Public Library. Quoted by permission.)
Edgar Allan Poe, A Criticism, with Remarks on the Morals and Religion of Shelley and Leigh Hunt (1919), p. 6.
On December 30, 1845, Miss Barrett wrote to Mathews: "As to the proposition about the prose miscellanies, I could not but be gratified by it, but I wish you to understand that I should be averse from the re-issue of the Athaeneum papers without a complete course of rewriting." (Collector, V [March 1892], 107). Considering that she apologised at great length for having failed to answer Mathews' letter earlier and as she explained in the same letter that the delay was due to her many activities permitted by the fair weather of the summer, it is quite safe to conclude that Mathews' proposition had been made long before the publication of The Raven and Other Poems (November 19, 1845), in fact probably while the project, that was mysteriously delayed (see, Works, XIII, 31), was under way.
The accusation can be found in an article entitled "The Poets of America" in the Foreign Quarterly Review for January 1844 (XXXII, 291-324) which Poe believed to be by Dickens though it was probably by John Foster. (See Sidney P. Moss, Poe's Literary Battles [1963], pp. 157-158).
These rumors were voiced by his friend Thomas Dunn English in his Aristidean, I (November 1845), 400.
Chivers' testimony of Poe's admiration for Elizabeth B. Barrett is unreliable, as are most of Chivers' co-called "Conversations": he only sums up, in Poe's own words, the last paragraph of Poe's review. (See Richard Beale Davis, ed., Chivers' Life of Poe [1952], p. 40.)
Compare: Works, XII, 10 and XVI, 135-136 (Southern Literary Messenger, XV [April 1849], 218); Works, XII, 20-21 and XVI, 159-160 (Southern Literary Messenger, XV [May 1848], 246); Works, XII, 16 and XIV, 182 (Graham's Magazine, XXXIV [June 1849], 363); Works, XII, 23-24 and XIII, 200-202 (Graham's Magazine, XXXVI [January 1850], 50-51). The two short incidental remarks on Miss Barrett in the Broadway Journal, I, 235 and II, 392 go no farther than repeating that she is "unquestionably, in spite of her numerous faults, the most glorious woman of her age" (Broadway Journal, I, 235).
Letters, II, 329 (omitting only the sentence, "but all are taken"). To Duyckinck, however, who was likely to remember Miss Barrett's letter, Poe sent the original MS. on December 30, 1846, no doubt as a reminder of his past services (Letters, II, 336).
Duyckinck's paragraph about Poe, in the New York Weekly News for February 1, 1845, is not mere puffery (it was apparently written before he intended to publish Poe's Tales). In two or three sentences Duyckinck attempts to give some accurate analysis of Poe's genius. After February 1, the New York Weekly News is peppered with favorable allusions to Poe (I, [May 31], 2; I [May 17], 1; I [July 5], 2), announcements of his forthcoming books (I [February 15], 2; I [March 15], 4; I [March 22], 2; II [December 6], 1); the New York Morning News carried a very favorable review of the Tales on June 28, 1845 (reprinted in the Weekly News for July 5) and friendly comments on the Broadway Journal on June 24. (The Morning and Weekly News also occasionally reprinted some of Poe's critiques from the Broadway Journal.) Briggs must have been horrified when he read in the New York Weekly News for May 17 (p. 1) this judgment on the Broadway Journal reprinted from the London Critic: "The aim of the Broadway Journal is to encourage a Home Literature to the utmost extent. . . ." From his strategic hideout at the American Review, Duyckinck contributed a highly commendatory review of the Tales in September 1845 (II, 306-309).
"The Raven" was published anonymously, though it seems that George Hooker Colton, the editor of the American Review, knew who was the author. In the same February issue of the American Review, Duyckinck published his moving appeal to union among American writers under the title of "The Literary Prospects of 1845." The publication of "The Raven," recommended by Colton's friend, Augustus Shea, may be the first indication of Colton's wish for union (for the sake of American literature) between Whigs and Democrats. It appears that Colton was far less hostile to Poe than the legend will have it and his friendliness may be the result of Duyckinck's influence. (See Cullen B. Colton, "George Hooker Colton and the Publication of the Raven," American Literature, X, 319-330.)
These three publications had not been previously noticed. The text of "The Raven" follows the Evening Mirror printing except for minor variations in punctuation and three obvious misprints, repeated in the Weekly News version. (see Floyd Stovall's definitive edition of The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe [1965], pp. 261-266.)
See G. Thomas Tanselle, "An Unknown Early Appearance of the 'Raven'," Studies in Bibliography, XVI (1963), 220-223. See also, G. Thomas Tanselle, "Unrecorded Early Reprintings of Two Poe Tales," Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, LVI (1962), 252.
See his letter to Evert A. Duyckinck of March 15, 1845. It is interesting to note that in this letter Simms does his best to present himself as a friend of Poe, which he is not. Moreover, he unearths a very old story about Poe's blasting review of his Partisan, obviously to exculpate himself from Poe's accusation (held ten years before) that he had been a member of the Knickerbocker clique: "He [Poe] knew, or he might have known, that I was none of that miserable gang about town, who begged in the literary highways. I had no clique, mingled with none, begged no praise from anybody, and made no condition with the herd." The Letters of William G. Simms (ed. Oliphant et al.) II, 43. Simms, who spent part of the year in New York, had been in fact very close to the Knickerbocker group, had been praised in the columns of the Knickerbocker and now attempts to remove the blot on his scutcheon for he, too, expects to have his works published in the "Library of American Books."
See Poe to Duyckinck: "I have already drawn . . . $50 (on account of the 'Parnassus')" (Letters, I, 301).
The articles he published in other magazines were also favorable to the Young Americans. See, e.g.: "Big Abel and the Little Manhattan," Godey's Lady's Book, XXXI (November 1845), 218-219; "The Wigwam and the Cabin," ibid., XXXII (January 1846), 41-42; the "Literati" sketches of Duyckinck and Caroline M. Kirkland (her Western Clearings had appeared as no. VII of "The Library of American Books"), (Works, XV, 58-61 and 84-88); "Our Book Shelves," Aristidean, I (September and October 1845), 234-242 and 320-322.
See e.g. "Society for the Promotion of Mutual Admiration," Knickerbocker, XXVI (March 1845), 259-260; or Knickerbocker, XXVI (December 1895), 581 (". . . the personal friend of Mr. Matthews [sic], his admirer and reviewer, the Aristarchus of the Ladies' Magazines").
North American Review, LXIII (October 1846), 359. The Catalogue of the American Art Association, Anderson Galleries, Inc. (1929), offered for sale "The original Manuscript of a critical review of the 'Works of William Gilmore Simms' by Edgar Allan Poe" (Sale Number 3800, article 286, p. 70). The few sentences from this article reproduced in photostat and printed in the catalogue coincide exactly with the first paragraph of Felton's review of Simms quoted above. As they are obviously in Poe's handwriting, it seems safe to assume that Poe had been taking notes either to answer Felton or to quote his review in his projected book on literary America.
See, e.g., "A Fable for Critics," Southern Literary Messenger (March 1849) and Works, XIII, 165-175. ("To speak algebraically: Mr. M[athews] is execrable, but Mr. C[hanning] is X plus 1 — ecrable.") (Works, XIII, 170); or "Poe on Headley and Channing," Southern Literary Messenger (October 1850), and Works, XIII, 202-209.
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