Text: Anonymous, “[Review of the Select Works of Edgar Allan Poe],” Philadelphia Times (Philadelphia, PA), (no volume specified), whole no. 1906, December 2, 1880, p. 3, col. 1

[page 3, column 1, continued:]

THE STANDARD EDITION of Poe's works is in four stout duodecimo volumes. For the few people who really desire to study Poe's character, this complete collection of his writings is necessary; and all book-lovers prefer it for the simple reason that it is complete. But a great many people seek Poe's writings only that their minds may be diverted or amused; and by these the presence of so much that is dry and serious is regarded less as a benefit than as a source of annoyance. There is, therefore, a fair excuse for the volume of “Select Works of Edgar Allen [[Allan]] Poe” that is published by W. J. Widdleton, New York; and if the selections had been made judiciously, and if the mechanical part of the book had been in keeping with its literary quality, many owners even of the four -volume edition would have bought also this single volume, into which the cream of the four is supposed to be collected. But the work is not well done; at least, it is not as well done as it ought to be. The scholarly reader will find cause for offense in the omission of accents in words which poetic requirements demand shall be accented, as well as in other signs of slovenly composition; and only less objectionable is the poor type and bad press-work. But these blemishes are to be expected in cheap books prepared for popular reading, and they are of the less importance because the people for whose use such books especially are intended do not notice them. A more serious fault is the carelessness shown in making the selections. It is not surprising, the length of the article being considered, that the editor should have omitted the “Narrative of A. Gordon Pym;” though to omit it is to omit one of Poe's most striking and most characteristic productions; nor is there much cause for complaint in the omission of the weird story of “The Pit and the Pendulum.” But it does seem scarcely conceivable that any professed selection” of Poe's works should appear without “The Fall of the House of Usher” — in some respects his best, as it certainly is his best known, composition in the domain of the fantastic and horrible: yet the editor, for some unfathomable reason of his own, has excluded this strange and wonderfully strong imaginative agony. This sort of exclusiveness is not fair to the ignorant reader for whose enlightenment “selected works”’ are set loose upon the world. However, the only thing that pleases readers of this sort more than having their skipping done for them is to have their reading done for them too. The best feature of this incomplete volume is a “life” of Poe, by R. H. Stoddard, written frankly and fairly.