Edgar Allan Poe was a significant figure in American literature who formulated the literary theory of horror and established short stories as a genre. Then existing conditions of the publishing industry irritated Poe so that he criticized his colleagues. During his life, he struggled with poverty, death, and lack of appreciation since he decided to pursue a career as a writer; even his renowned poem “The Raven” did not provide sufficient profit. Edgar Allan Poe (Primary Sources) are drawn from his letters and writings of the American journal’s editors and represent three episodes:
- Thoughts on the death of his wife and future independent career.
- Critique of Mr. Longfellow and the American writing sphere.
- Three reviews of Poe’s poem “The Raven.”
Edgar Allan Poe: The Death of Virginia (1848)
Six years ago, a wife [Virginia Clemm], whom I loved as no man ever loved before, ruptured a blood-vessel in singing [became deceased with tuberculosis]. Her life was despaired of. I took leave of her forever & underwent all the agonies of her death. She recovered partially, and I again hoped. At the end of a year the vessel broke again — I went through precisely the same scene. Again in about a year afterward…. Each time I felt all the agonies of her death — and at each accession of the disorder I loved her more dearly & clung to her life with more desperate pertinacity. But I am constitutionally sensitive — nervous in a very unusual degree. I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity. During these fits of absolute unconsciousness I drank, God only knows how often or how much…. I had indeed, nearly abandoned all hope of a permanent cure when I found one in the death of my wife [in 1847]. This I can & do endure as becomes a man — it was the horrible never-ending oscillation between hope & despair which I could not longer have endured without the total loss of reason. In the death of what was my life, then, I receive a new but — oh God! how melancholy an existence.
Poe, E. A. (2009). E. A. Poe to G. W. Eveleth (1848). Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore. Web.
Edgar Allan Poe: Plans of Careeer (1848)
I am resolved to be my own publisher. To be controlled is to be ruined. My ambition is great. If I succeed, I put myself (within 2 years) in possession of a fortune & infinitely more. My plan is to go through the South & West & endeavor to interest my friends so as to commence with a list of at least 500 subscribers. With this list I can take the matter into my own hands. There are some few of my friends who have sufficient confidence in me to advance their subscriptions — but at all events succeed I will.
Poe, E. A. (2009). E. A. Poe to G. W. Eveleth (1848). Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore. Web.
Edgar Allan Poe: On Plagiarism of Mr. Longfellow (1845)
It is universally, in private conversation — out of the knot of rogues and madmen aforesaid — admitted that the poetical claims of Mr. Longfellow [a poet and professor of Harvard] have been vastly overrated, and that the individual himself would be esteemed little without the accessaries of wealth and position. It is usually said, that he has a sufficient scholarship, a fine taste, a keen appreciation of the beautiful, a happy memory, a happier tact at imitation or transmutation, felicity of phrase and some fancy. A few insist on his imagination — thus proving the extent of their own — and showing themselves to be utterly unread in the old English and modern German literature, to one or other of which, the author of “Outre Mer” is unquestionably indebted for whatever imagination or traces of invention his works may display. … The simple truth is, that, whatever may be the talents of Professor Longfellow, he is the Great Mogul [a large diamond] of the Imitators. There is, perhaps, no other country than our own, under the sun, in which it would have been possible for him to have attained his present eminence; and no other, certainly, in which, after having attained it by accident or chicanery, he would not have been hurled from it in a very brief period after its attainment.
Poe, E. A. (2021). Review of Longfellow’s poems (text-02). Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore. Web.
James Brooks: On Poe’s “The Raven” (1845)
There is a poem in this book, [The American Whig Review,] which far surpasses anything that has been done even by the best poets of the age: — indeed there are none of them who could pretend to enter into competition with it, except, perhaps, Alfred Tennyson [famous British poet]; and he only to be excelled out of measure. Nothing can be conceived move effective than the settled melancholy of the poet bordering upon sullen despair, and the personification of this despair in the Raven settling over the poet’s door, to depart thence “Nevermore.” In power and originality of versification the whole is no less remarkable than it is, psychologically, a wonder.
Poe, E. A. (2021). Review of Longfellow’s poems (text-02). Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore. Web.