Text: “Corsair” [James Wood Davidson], “Edgar Poe,” Daily Register (Columbia, SC), vol. VI, no. 32, September 2, 1880, p. 4, col. 5

[page 4, column 5:]

The law of compensation prevails everywhere. Action causes reaction. This law, which is all-reaching, finds an illustration in the post mortem fortunes of Edgar Poe. Soon after his death in 1849, Griswold published his “Memoir of Poe,” in which the poet is made to appear almost a fiend — false, drunken, treacherous, vacilating, and vile generally. For ten years those shadows rested on his name. Up to that time the protests against Griswold were few and feeble; but the reaction began. Mrs. Whitman, in her “Edgar Poe and His Critics,” took the first step, in 1859. Then followed Didier, of Baltimore, and Gill, of Boston, as biographers; and now comes Ingram, of London.

I have just had the pleasure of receiving by mail from the author himself a copy of this last named. It is entitled “Edgar Allan Poe — His Life, Letters and Opinions,” by John H. Ingram. Published by John Hogg, Paternoster Row, London; in two volumes duodecimo, 606 pages in all. Portraits of Poe and his mother, with fac-simile and several appendixes.

This work is like those of Didier and Gill in being vindicatory of the poet's Griswoldized fame. It is at the same time a biography and a defense; and rather more a defense than a biography as it must needs be. It is, first of all, intensely interesting; and being, by all odds, the largest of the lives it is pre-eminently the life of Poe. Mr. Didier, in the preface of his work, said: “The present memoir is as full and complete as it is possible to make it;” and yet Mr. Gill gave us a fuller memoir than Didier's, and Mr. Ingram has given us a work probably as large as both the preceding. The letters of Poe make a much larger proportion of Mr. Ingram's volumes than they do of either of the other books, and in this regard it is far richer in interest and far more autobiographical. Indeed, the author leaves his subject to speak for himself on many very delicate questions — questions touching Poe's love relations generally. It is largely in this that this life differs from the others. So many of Poe's letters to those he loved are there quoted that one (if guided by these lights alone in reaching his conclusion) is likely to be a littel bit mixed about who is “Lenore,” who “Annabel Lee,” and who “Annie.” Those who look for a symmetrical character in Poe will look in vain her to see it; as they must look in vain upon the man himself.

While Mr. Ingram;s “Life” amounts, as a whole, to a triumphant vindication of Poe from the abundant smutch of all the dirty hands that soiled him both before and since — especially since — his death, it still leaves upon the mind of the reader the painful impression of an unbalance, lonely, helpless and hopeless man. But the vindication is noble, and so handsome a tribute to so brilliant a man is a work to be proud of.

The book will soon be in our book market, doubtless, and will have an unusual interest for Southern readers. For, notwithstanding the fact that Poe was born in Boston, he is essentially a Southern author, his parents and family being Baltimoreans.

CORSAIR.

NEW YORK. August 27, 1880.