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Happy New Year! I have been waiting for my volume to be out before I wrote to you again, and as it comes out a month later than I expected the delay in my letter has been proportionate. I am afraid that the copies for sale will get to Philadelphia before yours but I was out of town when they were sent off an, came too late to send you one. I now send one by Harnden to be left at the office of Graham’s magazine which I trust, will reach you. I know that there will be some sentiments in the volume which you will dislike but I trust not enough to lesson your esteem for the author. It would be a great pleasure to me if you would review it in Graham. [[ . . . .]] I shall send you my first volume a soon as I can go into Boston to get it. It is rather a publication of my exercise in learning to write poetry, than a collection of poems.
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Notes:
Whether or not this letter was addressed to Poe is uncertain. Part of the trouble centers around the dating of the letter, which Ostrom gives on his check list as 1844, but Mabbott, presuming the book mentioned to be Some Conversations with old Poets, felt must be 1845. At some point, Mabbott stated that “I believe this letter surely to Poe,” but added a later note, dated as August 7, 1960, “Definitely for someone in Phila. in January 1845 — hence not EAP.” The text quoted above was given in Goodspeed’s catalogue, #237.
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[S:0 - MS, 18xx] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Misc - Letters - J. R. Lowell to Poe (RCL461a)