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THE LATE EDGAR A. POE. — An attack, unexampled for ferocity and all uncharitableness, has recently appeared in the New York Sunday Atlas. That Mr. Poe, in common with the rest of mankind, possessed faults, no one will deny; but that he was “the irredeemable sot and vagabond — the monster of ingratitude” which this literary jackall charges him with having been, few persons in this or any other community where he was known, can be induced to believe.
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Notes:
The Altas was a weekly newspaper published in New York every Sunday, 1838-1881. A search of the relevant file of the Atlas at the American Antiquarian Society was kindly made at the request of the Poe Society by Dan Boudreau, and the only item about Poe from this period turns out to be a reprint of “A Great Man Self-Wrecked” in the issue of February 27, 1853 (vol. XV, no. 40, p. 1, cols 4-5). While that article, which was widely reprinted in various places and forms, does not use the precise phrasing quoted in the present article, those would be suitable summaries of the image projected by that article. It is, perhaps, a bit curious that the first time the editors of the Richmond Daily Times noticed the article was in a New York newspaper.
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[S:0 - RDT, 1853] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - A Poe Bookshelf - The Late Edgar A. Poe (Anonymous, 1853)