Text: Anonymous, “[Review of] The Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe,” Athenaeum (London, UK), December 25, 1852, p. 1425.

“The Poetical Works of Edgar Allan Poe, with a Notice of His Life and Genius. By James Hannay, Esq. With Twenty Illustrations.” — Some of these twenty illustrations are gracefully fantastic. The biographical notice is perversely sentimental. The story of Poe's life was told by himself so largely and loudly to the public by the daily papers of America, that to attempt to colour over its shames with sympathy and apology is idle. — The poems, with their strange, unwholesome, unequal vigour (night-mare verses, if such things can be) speak for themselves. Their writer, apart from his works, had best be forgotten.