Text: Anonymous, “Works of Edgar A. Poe,” Public Ledger and Daily Transcript (Philadelphia, PA), vol. XXVIII, no. 94, January 12, 1850, p. 2, col. 1

[page 2, column 1, continued:]

WORKS OF EDGAR A. POE — We have received from Wm. B. Zieber the works of Edgar Allen Poe, with notices of his life and genius by N. P. Willis, J. R. Lowell and R. W. Griswold, published in two handsomely printed volumes. One volume contains his tales. in which the admirable stories of the “Gold Bug” and the “Spectacles,” both written for the “Dollar Newspaper” of this city, and for the former of which he received the award of $100. The other volume is filled with poetry and miscellany. Poe's writings are distinguished for vigorous and minute analysis, and the skill with which he has employed the strange fascination of mystery and terror. There is an air of reality in all his narrations — a dwelling upon particulars, and a faculty of interesting you in them such as is possessed by few writers except those who are giving their own individual experiences. The reader can scarcely divest his mind, even in reading the most fanciful of his stories, that the events of it have not actually occurred, and the characters had a real existence. These volumes will be read with pleasure. They are an acquisition to the literature of the country.