Text: Anonymous, “[Review of J. Joyce's Life of Poe],” Inter Ocean (Chicago, IL), vol. XXX, no. 197, October 7, 1901, p. 8, cols. 5-6

[page 8, column 5, continued:]

The publishers of this book assert that no life of Poe yet written in any manner compares with this biography, which is no doubt true, and for which intelligent lovers of literature may well give thanks. The author does not understand the character concerning whom he writes, but for that he cares little, his object being to exploit himself in the book at the expense of the subject of his work. In his introduction he says: “Edgar Allan Poe possessed by nature the three great elements that constitute the genuine poet. Truth, Pride, and Lunacy were his attendent [[attendant]] companions. He was a psychic, phenomenal specimen of humanity.” “Yesterday he suffered for sympathy and bread, today a funeral train honors his memory, tomorrow a monument will point posterity to a prodigy of celestial aspirations whose songs shall warm and thrill the heart of mankind adown the crowding ages.” This truism is then emphasized by the introduction of a five-stanza poem by the biographer. We pass this by in an introduction with some surprise, but when we find throughout the sketch of the dead poet that the effusions of the living one, his biographer, are brought in to point every moral deduced, to decorate every incident detailed, we are literally struck dumb with amazement. Surely such a manner of writing “classic biography,” as Colonel Joyce styles his work, was never before attempted.

We need not take space here to outline the life of Poe, as told by this man, who claims to have been numbered among the poet's friends. The one thing that impresses the reader of the biography most distinctly is its author's apparent inability to discriminate between authorities. For instance, the whereabouts of Poe for two of his youthful years, 1827-29, have been considered as somewhat of a mystery. He himself is said to have told some strange stories of foreign wanderings during those years, but there being good evidence that he enlisted in the army under an assumed name in 1827 and served therein until early in 1829, the mystery has been regarded as solved Colonel Joyce gives a letter from an officer of the army concerning the discharge of a young man calling himself Edgar Allan Perry, the circumstances of his life referred to absolutely identifying this young man with Poe. Following this he also tells of meeting an old sailor in 1867, who, [column 6:] when in his cups, told amazing stories of adventures in foreign lands, in company with Edgar Poe, during three years. Evidently he regards the official and signed report of no more value as evidence than the yarn of the drunken sailor. Or perhaps the latter is valued especially because it affords opportunity for bringing in another of the colonel's poems.

The death of Mr. Allan Poe's foster father is made the text for introducing another Joyce poem, and yet another comes in with some moralizing upon Poe's wild habits. The writer soon after tells of the prizes offered by the Saturday Visitor for the best prose tale and the best poem sent them. Poe a story, “A Manuscript Found in a Bottle,” won in the prose competition, and his poem, *The Coliseum, received the most votes for the other. However, as the two prizes could not, by the rules of the competition, be given to one person, the next best poem, “Song of the Winds,” which Joyce claims to have been written by himself, received this award. of course these two poems are printed here, to show how mistaken was the estimate that first ranked Poe's as the best. Again, the writer pauses in the biography to tell us that. though Poe “was : master of language and rhythmical construction.” be never wrote a poem equaling one entitled “Retrospection, which he (Joyce) penned on the death of his first sweetheart, forty years ago. Again, he quotes another poem which he calls “Love and Laughter.” with the admonition, to the reader to memorize it. for “it is a philosophic sermon.’ This poem is the well-known one beginning:

which, with the alteration of a few lines from the version here given. is found in the poems of Mrs. Ella Wheeler Wilcox, and which most readers believe that gifted woman to have written. The colonel, however. makes no reference to this controversy. But before he concludes his scrappy biography be contrives to drag into it some three more of his own poems, and one which he accredits to a spiritual medium of New York. He also gives place to the absurd story of the Italian Penzoni, who claimed that Poe's “Raven” was deliberately copied from a poem by his grandfather entitled “The Parrot.’ But neither Penzoni nor the biographer gives any evidence that this poem was actually written in the first decade of the century, as the Italian asserted. It is quite possible that both Penzoni and “The Parrot” may have had like origin in the fertile brain of Colonel John A. Joyce himself.

In conclusion. we may say that so erratic and incoherent a work is probably not to be found elsewhere in biographic writing. The incidents given are without order or arrangement. and seem rather to be clippings from some old scrap book than ordered biography. Quotations from this writer and that about Poe, extracts from Poe's critical writing, incidents, verified and unverified alike, a few quotations from other writers that have no bearing on the biography. with many from Joyce himself quite as irrelevant- all these are huddled together, with little plan, and less effective purpose. The whole constitutes as hard reading as we have met with In a long time. (New York: F. Tennyson Neely company.).