country” (near what is now Eighty-fourth Street and Broad-
w ay), and there wrote a final draft of "The Raven.” After
it was rejected by Graham, it was sold to George H. Colton
for pseudonymous publication in the February issue of a
new magazine, the American Review. Willis saw it in proof
and published it in the Evening Mirror on January 29,
1845, with an enthusiastic introduction and the authors
name. Success was instantaneous; "Mr. Poe the poet” was
to be world-famous, permanently.
He became an editor of a weekly paper, the Broadway
Journal, and published a series of papers on Longfellow’s
"plagiarisms”—although Poe meant only that Longfellow
was a derivative poet. He lectured on poetry at the Society
Library. He met Mrs. Frances Sargent Osgood (temporarily
separated, though not publicly, from her husband), and
fell in love with her—perhaps platonically, and in any case
׳THE M AN WHO CALLED HIM SELF POE
7
with Virginia's approval. He also frequented the salon of the
beautiful Anne Charlotte Lynch, later Mrs. Botta. And he
was pursued by Mrs. Elizabeth F. Ellet, a woman of bad char-
acter—vain, ambitious only of reputation, and given to writ-
ing anonymous letters. This all led to complicated quarrels
which may be left to the major biographers. He published
The Raven and Other Foems and a selection of a dozen of
his Tales. He went to Boston to lecture, became drunk, and
read his poem “A1 Aaraaf," which the audience found
baffling, although T. W. Higginson testified to its beauty. He
became the sole proprietor of the Broadway Journal, in
which he published revised versions of most of his stories.
But the paper collapsed with the last issue of January 3, 1846.
At the advice of the eccentric though melodious poet Dr.
Thomas Holley Chivers, he moved again from the city to
the cottage at Fordham, his last home. He published “The
Philosophy of Composition" in Grahams Magazine in April
of 1846. For Godeys Lady?s Book he wrote a series of papers
called The Literati of New York, most of which were innoc-
uous; but, one on Dr. Thomas Dunn English, with whom
Poe had had a fist fight (remotely connected with Mrs.
Ellet and Mrs. Osgood), led to bitter controversy. Poe ul-
timately sued for libel and won his case, but at the expense
of all reputation for sobriety or reliability. Godey gave up
The Literati series, but printed “The Cask of Amontillado," a
story of revenge now thought to be in part inspired by the
authors own bitter quarrels. The story is ironic—a villain
murders his enemy and is not found out; but at the end he
realizes that the victim has rested in peace, while he has not.
Early in 1847 Virginia died. Poe was also very ill, and was
nursed by Mrs. Clemm and Mrs. Marie Louise Shew; the
latter was the daughter of a physician and had been trained
as one at home. To her Poe wrote several poems; one, “The
Beloved Physician," of some length, is lost save for ten fines.
She is supposed to have suggested “ The Bells" to him. Mrs.
Shew consulted the famous Dr. Valentine Mott about her
b
THE M AN WHO CALLED HIM SELF POE
patient; she was told Poe had had a brain lesion in youth
and would not live long. The lesion is thought to have pro-
duced manic and depressive periods, which might account
for some of Poe’s wild freaks and for occasional references
to his being kept under sedation. All medical men who knew
the poet or have studied his case agree that he did not use
drugs habitually. Poe’s one important work of 1847 was
“Ulalume,” composed for an elocutionist, Cotesworth P.
Bronson.
Early in 1848 Poe gave a lecture on the universe, which
was revised as a book, Eureka. In September he went to
Providence and became engaged to the local poetess, Sarah
Helen Whitman, to whom he had written a second
“ To Helen” (now sometimes called “To Helen Whitman” )
before their meeting. This affair produced a number of im-
passioned and very literary letters, but soon ended. Poe had
visited Lowell, Massachusetts, in July and lectured on the
“Poetic Principle” ; while in Lowell he first met Mrs. Annie
Richmond, with whom he fell in love. In 1849 he addressed
to her a long poem, “For Annie,” ascribing his recovery
from illness to the thought of the beloved lady’s presence.
Poe began to write for the Boston Flag of Our Union, a
cheap paper that paid well. To it he sent his last horror
story, “Hop-Frog,” his sonnet “To My Mother,” and the
short poem “Eldorado,” which is about a search for beauty
rather than gold. Poe also found a patron, Sarah (or Estelle)
Anna Lewis, who employed him as her press agent. Poe
and Mrs. Clemm spent a good deal of time visiting the
Lewis home in Brooklyn.
Late in June of 1849, after having composed a final version
of “The Bells” and “Annabel Lee,” Poe went south. He had a
horrible spree in Philadelphia, but was rescued by C.
Chauncey Burr, a minor writer, and John Sartain, the en-
graver who now ran the Union Magazine. They sent the
poet to Richmond, where he had a happy summer, becom-
ing engaged again to the sweetheart of his youth, the
THE M AN WHO CALLED HIM SELF POE
9
widowed Elmira Royster Shelton. He was also received in
society, and enjoyed the friendship of the very young poetess
Susan Archer Talley, later Mrs. Weiss. Poe lectured both in
Richmond and Norfolk. He went on two sprees, however,
and on August 27 joined the Sons of Temperance.
Late in September he started for the north by boat and
arrived in Baltimore probably on the twenty-eighth. There,
according to Bishop O. P. Fitzgerald, he attended a birthday
party, pledged his hostess in wine, and went on a spree. His
whereabouts are unknown from then until October 3, an
election day, when he was found in great distress by a
compositor, Joseph W. Walker. The story that he had been
taken, drunken or drugged, to polling places by ‘ repeaters,״
though widely related, is a hoax. Friends brought him to the
Washington Hospital where, under the care of Dr. John J.
Moran (who later published overcolored reminiscences),
he died without ever becoming completely conscious. The
last words attributed to him, “Lord, help my poor soul,״
seem to be authentic. He was buried in what is now
Westminster Churchyard on October 8, 1849, where a
monument to him was erected in 1875. Mrs. Clemm and her
daughter now rest beside him.
Poe was primarily and by choice a poet. He held three
important ideas besides his insistence on brevity: that poetry
is close to music, that beauty is the chief aim of poetry, and
that a poem may be composed logically (see “The Philos-
ophy of Composition״ ). He was deeply interested in prosody
and other tec
hnical aspects of verse, and published on the
subject The Rationale of Verse (October and November
1848, in issues of the Southern Literary Messenger).
For reasons of economic necessity, Poe wrote little verse
between 18 3 1 and 1845, concentrating instead on the tales.
Nevertheless, “The Haunted Palace,״ an allegory of mad-
ness, and “The Conqueror Worm,״ the most pessimistic yet
the most powerful of all his poems, belong to this period.
With the sudden recognition brought by the publication of
IO
THE M AN WHO CALLED HIM SELF POE
“The Raven״ in 1845, he turned more to poetry. In the last
years of his life he wrote “The Bells,״ which had been begun
by Mrs. Shew; “For Annie,״ the simplest of his ballads; the
courageous brief lyric “Eldorado״ ; and the touching ballad
“Annabel Lee.״
Poe cared less for his tales than for his poems. Neverthe-
less, he had a firm and workable theory about the short story,
which he expounded in his famous review (Grahams Mag-
azine, April-M ay 1842) of Hawthornes Twice-Told Tales.
A skillful literary artist, said Poe, does not fashion his
thoughts to accommodate his incidents, “but having con-
ceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect
to be wrought out, he then invents such incidents—he then
combines such events as may best aid him in establishing
this preconceived effect. . . . In the whole composition there
should be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or
indirect, is not to the one pre-established design.״ He in-
sisted on unity of mood as well as of time, space, and action.
Poe is credited with the invention of the modem detective
story with its amateur sleuth. He was similarly original in
his version of the treasure hunt, “The Gold Bug,״ particularly
in his introduction of a cryptogram.
Although Poe fancied his humorous work, the best of it is
too much taken up with the faults and foibles of the world
around him. “ Some Words with a Mummy,״ for instance,
deals with a brief American fad for Egyptology, and “The
Literary Life of Thingum Bob,״ the best of the humorous
tales, was a satire on the magazines of his day. Both are
too dated to give pleasure to any but a few students of the
period. He also wrote a gentle love story, “Three Sundays
in a Week,״ but his great stories, beyond any doubt, are the
tales of horror, ratiocination, or pure beauty.
The style of Poe's stories progressed from one highly
decorated and elaborate, as in “The Assignation,״ to one of
straightforward simplicity, as in “The Imp of the Perverse״
and “Hop-Frog.״ He said that the stories of pure beauty,
THE M A N WHO CALLED HIM SELF POE
1 1
most notably ״ The Domain of Arnheim,” had in them much
of his soul. Toward the end of his life he remarked that he
thought he had accomplished his purpose in poetry, but that
he saw new possibilities in prose.
Besides the books of criticism mentioned above, there is a
great deal extant of Poes work as a day-to-day critic. Much
of it is about works that came unchosen to a reviewer’s
table. It often contains keen remarks of great significance,
but too much of it is devoted to the examination of flies in
amber.
Poe had a tremendous influence abroad. His special kind
of poetiy was echoed by Tennyson, Swinburne, and Rossetti;
his stories influenced Stevenson, Conan Doyle, Jules Verne,
Huysmans, and many others. It was in France that Poe’s
influence attained its widest range, largely owing to the deep
respect of Charles Baudelaire for Poe’s poems, stories,
and aesthetic theories. Between 1856 and 1864 Baudelaire
wrote three articles on Poe and translated, with singular
felicity, several of his works. Lois and Francis E. Hyslop, Jr.,
translated and edited Baudelaire on Poe (19 52), which con-
tains Baudelaire’s three major essays and various prefaces
and notes. Mallarmé, Valery, and Rimbaud, as well as the
whole flock of Parnassians, symbolists, and surrealists, ex-
hibit the influence of Poe. Covering the entire range of
״ influences” is a volume on Poe in Foreign Lands and
Tongues (19 4 1), edited by John C. French.
Poe was given to telling romantic stories of himself, and
the construction of an accurate biography has been fraught
with the greatest difficulties. The first formal biographer, R.
W. Griswold, published in the Works a memoir (1850)
which was bitterly unfriendly to the poet, but which cannot
be wholly neglected. In 1859 Sarah Helen Whitman pub-
lished Edgar Poe and His Critics, the first full-length defense
of her fiancé. John H. Ingram, an Englishman, wrote many
biographical articles and a full-length book, Edgar Allan
Poe (1880). He had access to many friends of Poe, espe-
1 2
THE M A N WHO CALLED HIM SELF POE
daily ladies, but in his zeal to defend Poe's memory he some-
times disregarded facts. Most of Ingram's papers are now at
the University of Virginia; an annotated check list ( i960) of
them by John C. Miller is of great value. In 1885 appeared
George Edward Woodberry's very valuable Edgar Allan
Poe (rev. ed., 2 vols., 1909). The biography (1902) by
James A. Harrison was highly favorable to Poe; it contained
much new information, but is in some ways superficial. In
1926 Hervey Allen published Israfel, the most widely read of
Poe's biographies, but it was begun as a novel, and the au-
thor never completely eliminated all fictional passages. In
the same year appeared Edgar Allan Poe the Man by Mary
E. Phillips, which, though uncritical and prejudiced, con-
tains a repository of stories and pictures that, if used dis-
cerningly, is of great value. One of the most controversial
of all books on Poe was Joseph Wood Krutch's Edgar Allan
Poe: A Study in Genius ( 1926). Krutch found the key to Poe's
morbidity in the fact that his stories were marked by a “com-
plete sexlessness.'' Killis Campbell wrote often and signifi-
cantly on Poe. His most important book is The Mind of Poe
and Other Studies (19 33). His title essay is an invaluable
summing up. Particularly important is Campbell’s evidence
on Poe's use of contemporary fife in America. Campbell
also produced a valuable edition of The Poems of Edgar
Allan Poe (19 17 ).
The best single life of Poe is Arthur Hobson Quinn's Ed-
gar Allan Poe (19 4 1), though it is too much for the defense
to be wholly satisfactory.
Most of the many editions of Poe's works are founded
on Griswold's (1849-56). Ingram's edition (1874-75) made
a few additions to the canon, as did that of Stedman and
Woodberry (1895). The only edition that even approached
completeness was the seventeen-volume work (1902) of
James A. Harrison. Harvard Press promises a new edition
under the general editorship of T. O. Mabbott
to contain
much new material, mostly in criticism.
THE M AN WHO CALLED HIM SELF POE
1 3
Other important books on various aspects of Poe and
his works include: N. Bryllion Fagin, The Histrionic Mr. Poe
(1949); Haldeen Braddy, Glorious Incense (19 53); Patrick
H. Quinn, The French Face of Edgar Poe (19 57 ); Vincent
Buranelli, Edgar Allan Poe (19 6 1); and Edward Wagen-
knecht, Edgar Allan Poe (1963).
FICTION ABOUT POE
THE VALLEY OF UNREST
“ The Valley of Unrest” is much more than the title of one of Edg;
Allan Poe's poems, it also is the inspiration of one of the strange
“ books” ever published, known in its entirety as The Valley of Unret
A Book Without a Woman, Edgar Allan Poe, A n Old Oddity Pape
Edited by Douglass Sherley. The copy at hand was published in Ne
York by White, Stokes, and Allen in 18 8 4 (though the book is cop
righted 18 8 3 by Douglass Sherley). The volume is twelve and a ha
inches high and nine and three fourths inches wide, printed on hu!
dred-pound orange book paper, with covers of the same reinforce
paper stock one sixteenth of an inch thick. It has five holes punche
through the sixty-five pages (which are bulked to five-eighths-of-ai
inch thickness) and the book is bound with strong brown cord, loope
horizontally around the spine as well as vertically upward. The te:
is printed on one side of the paper with f s serving as s's throughou
The volume's dedication page bears the legend: “A book without
woman dedicated to a woman.” There are two introductions, bol
by Douglass Sherley. The first purports that the book is written t
someone else, who had spent most of his life traveling about tl
world as the consequence of “ an awful crime,” yet previously th;
man had been responsible for a “rare, brilliant” deed whic
brought him “ the applause of an hour.” Most important, “ . . . the!
pages tell the tale of other people's lives, and not of his own. The
tell something of that strange man, Edgar Allan Poe, who was an ini
mate college friend.” They purport to tell the origin of the poei
“ The Valley of Unrest.”
Edgar Allan Poe is a major figure in the story that is related, an
the discussions of his status at the University of Richmond, his pe
The Man Who Called Himself Poe Page 3
