Text: Thomas C. Clarke, “[Review of the Prose Romances],” Philadelphia Saturday Museum (Philadelphia, PA), vol. 1, no. 33, July 22, 1843, p. 2, col. 2

[page 2, col. 2, continued:]

THE PROSE ROMANCES of Edgar A. Poe, author of the “Gold Bug,” “Arthur Gordon Pym,” “Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque,” etc. [[,]] etc., Uniform serial edition. Each complete in itself. No. 1 containing the “MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE,” and “The Man that was Used Up.” Philadelphia: published by Wm. H. Graham, 98 Chestnut street, at 12 1/2 cts.

Those who have a relish for the wild and wonderful — who would “sup their full of horrors,” revel in mysteries and riot in the deep, dark, recesses which an iron intellect is capable of investing with intense interest, have a full feast spread for them in the pages of the Prose Romances. But above all has the man of legal lore an opportunity of acquiring an insight into his profession, more thorough than his long days and studious nights could ever glean from all the records of criminal practices in the courts, or the pages of Blackstone or Coke. Mr. Poe has the power, more than any other writer within our knowledge, not only of creating the most intricate mysteries, but unravelling them too; and had the Banks, in the great case of Eldrige, set the wits of Edgar A. Poe to work, they might have dispensed with the half-dozen lawyers of eminence and distinction, whose names we do not now remember. The Banks, who were so awfully chiselled, to use a classical phrase, on that eventful occasion, might have dispensed with all that vast array of “Philadelphia Lawyers,” had they but placed their victim under the inquisitorial scrutiny of the author of the Prose Romances.