Text: William Doyle Hull II, “Part IV, Chapter I,” A Canon of the Critical Works of Edgar Allan Poe (1941), pp. 398-413


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[page 398:]

PART IV: THE NEW YORK MIRROR
Chapter I: Poe — Mechanical Paragraphist

The haunting leitmotiv which played such capricious tricks with Poe's life is sounded full and strong in a letter to Anthon of June, 1844:

Not long before quitting the Mag Mess: just mentioned, I saw, or fancied that I saw, through a long and dim vista, the wide and brilliant field for a true ambition which a Magazine of proper noble and high and bold and noble aims presented to any him who should successfully accomplish establish it in America . ... Holding steadily in view my ultimate purpose — to establish found a Magazine of my own, or in which at least I might have a proprietary right, — it has been my constant endeavour not so much to establish a reputation great in itself as of th one of that particular character which should best further my objects, and draw attention to my exertions as Editor of a Magazine. Thus I have thus written no books and have been so far essentially a Magazinist ——.(1)

From Chivers on May 15 came the answer to Poe's proposition of the preceding summery:

I expect to receive my part of my father's Estate in July next, and should like to unite with you, provided it would be to my interest to do so. I should like for you to make a perfect exposition of the manner in which you wish me to join you. Would not the publication of such a Magazine as Graham's, be more profitable to us!(2)

Poe answered with vigor:

Touching the ‘Penn Magazine’, or rather the ‘Stylus’, (for this is the title I should finally adopt) — I have by no means given up the intention of issuing it; my views respecting it are only confirmed by time and more intimate acquaintance with our literature, as well as with the business of Magazine publication, [page 399:] I am only ‘biding my time‘ — awaiting means and opportunity, Should you conclude to join me, we will not fail to make fans and fortune. Then you feel ready to attempt the enterprise, you will find me here — at New York — where I live, at present, in strict seclusion, busied with books and ambitious thoughts, until the hour shall arrives when I may come forth with a certainty of success. A Magazine like Graham's will, mover do ... I have been lately lecturing on ‘American Poetry’. ... (1)

Twice again Poe testified to the mode of his life in the summer of 1844. To Lowell:

I am living so entirely out of the world, just now ... For myself I am vary industrious — collecting and arranging materials for a Critical History of American Literature.(2)

To Thomas:

I have left Philadelphia, and am living, at present, about five miles out of New York. For the last seven or eight months I have been playing hermit in earnest, nor have I seen et living soul out of my family ... At present I am so ouch out of the world that I may not be able to do anything immediately.(3)

When next we hear of Poe, one month later, he is working on the Mirror.

The first number, the New-York Mirror, was published on August 2, 1823 as a weekly by George Pope Morris, with Samuel Woodworth as its editor. In 1824 Morris succeeded Woodworth as editor; associated with heat for at least eight, years, beginning in 1828, was Theodore Sedgwick Fay, whose Norman Leslie Poe tossed over the horns of the moon in 1835. Nathaniel Parker Willis discontinued in September, 1831, his American Monthly Magazine, founded just after his graduation from Yale; turned the list over to Morris; and became associate editor with Morris [page 400:] and Fay. He was off in less than a month to do Europe for the Mirror. For four years he sent back his Pencillings. one hundred and thirty-nine letters in his peculiar vein, which set into perpetual motion all of the editorial scissors of the country, He retired from the Mirror in 1836. John Inman, C. F. Hoffman, and Spas Sargent served successively as Morris’ associate. The Mirror was abandoned at the end of 1842 because of financial difficulties. On April 8, 1843, it was revived with Morris and Willis as full partners: this is the New Mirror. Again it was discontinued on September 28, 1844, because the post-office department was forcing it to pay postage at the magazine rate, which was much higher than that for newspapers. The editors decided to start in its place a daily, the New York Evening Mirror. with a weekly edition, the New York Weekly Mirror. A third partner was admitted, Hiram Fuller.

Years later Willis wrote of Pos's being employed on the paper:

Our first knowledge of Mr. Poe's removal to this city was by a call which wee received from ... (Mrs. Clemm). She was in search of employment for him, and she excused bar errand by mentioning that he was ill. ... (1)

Still later he wrote:

POE came to us quite incidentally — neither of us, if I remember rightly, having been personally acquainted with him till that times —(2)

Apparently Poe fell sick after the September 8 letter to Thomas. The family must have been quite destitute, for the sole source of income during the summer had been proceeds from a few articles Poe had managed to [page 401:] Sell.(1) Mrs. Clemm, that remarkable woman, must have made the rounds in search of employment for “Eddie.’ Perhaps Poe had heard that Willis and Morris were planning to begin a daily. At any rate, Willis was a likely candidate. Poe had reviewed him several times quite favorably on the whole. Morris also had received commendation from Poe. In “Doings of Gotham,” the series of letters Poe contributed to the Columbian [[Columbia]] Spy in the early summer of 1844, he wrote:

The ‘Mirror still thrives, and will, in the end, be a fortune to its very worthy proprietors. The popularity of General Morris is, perhaps, a little on the wane; but that of Mr. Willis is gradually increasing. He is well constituted for dazzling the masses — with brilliant, agreeable talents — no profundity — no genius. A more estimable man, in his private relations, never, existed.(2)

A little later in the same series Poe again discusses Willis:

Few men have received more abuse, deserving it less, than the author of ‘Melanie’. I never read a paper from his pen in the ‘New-Mirror’ without regretting his abandonment of Glen-Mary, and the tranquility and leisure he might there have found. In its retirement he might have accomplished much, both for himself and for posterity, but, chained to the ore of a more weekly paper, professedly addressing the frivolous and the fashionable, what can he hope for but a gradual sinking into the slough of Public Disregard? For his sake. I do sincerely wish the ‘New-Mirror’ would go the way of all flesh.(3)

Poe had also had some correspondence with Willis. Some time in the spring of 1844 he submitted to Willis “The Oblong Box”; on its being rejected by the Mirror, he wrote Mrs. Hale: [page 402:]

Mr. W. was pleased to express himself in very warm tones of the article, which he considers the best I have written, and urged me to offer it to Mr. Riker, for the next Opal; promising to speak to Mr. R. and engage him (if possible) to accept the Tale ... (1)

This does not necessarily prove in error Willis’ statement that Mrs. Clemm's visit was his first knowledge of Poe's residence in New York. The tale may have been sent, though it is not likely I think, before Poe left Philadelphia.

The change from a weekly to a daily required an increase in the office staff. Mrs. Clemm's visit was opportune. The editors took Poe on largely, one imagines, out, of sympathy. That they expected some unpleasantness is revealed in Willis’ 1849 obituary:

With the highest admiration for his genius, and a willingness to let it atone for more than ordinary irregularity, we were led by common report to expect a very capricious attention to his duties, and occasionally a scene of violence and difficulty. Time went on, however, and he was invariably punctual, and industrious.(2)

A passage in the Evening Mirror for October 8 makes it clear that Poe's services were engaged before the issue of the new venture. Willis prefaces an article, the first in a series written by Poe, “Authors’ Pay in America”:

We have hot coals smouldering in the ashes of ‘things put off’, which we poke reluctantly to the 'surface just now — reluctantly only because we wish to light beacons for an authors’ crusade and we have no leisure to be more than its Peter the Hermit. We solemnly summon Edgar Poe to do the devoir of Coeur de Lion (sic) — no man's weapon half so trenchant!(3) [page 403:]

This is the only reference in this paper to Poe as associated, with the Mirror. The Poe correspondence of the Mirror period extant is scant. Only two letters suggest a connection with the Mirror. One of them, the background of which is obscure, is pertinent hero, Poe to S. D. Craig, October 24:

Proceed. There are few things which could afford me more pleasure than, an opportunity of holding you up to that public admiration which you have so long courted ... The tissue of written lies which you have addressed to myself individually, I deem it as well to retain. It is a specimen of attorney grammar too rich to be lost. As for the letter designed for Mr. Willis (who, beyond doubt, will feel honoured by your correspondence), I take the liberty of re-inclosing it. The fact is, I am neither your footman nor the penny-post.(1)

Willis seems to have felt rather keenly the pathos of the situation:

It was rather a step downward, after being the chief editor of several monthlies, as Poe had been, to come into the office of a daily journal as a mechanical paragraphist.(2)

With Poe it was a matter of absolute necessity. He bolstered his spirits with a new magazine-dream. In March, 1844, he had described, to Lowell a plan for a coalition magazine. Receiving no answer, he wrote again in October, 1944 [[1844]]:

Twelve of the most active and influential men of letters in this country, should unite for the purpose of publishing a Magazine of high character. Their names to be kept secret, that their mutual support might be, the more effectual. Each member to take a share of the stock [page 404:] at $100 a share ... The Magazine could be started with positive certainty of success ... The aim would be to elevate without stupefying our literature — to further justice — to resist foreign dictation — and to afford (in the circulation and profit of the journal) a remuneration to ourselves for whatever we should write.(1)

And he awaited his opportunity — which according to pattern eventually proved a mirage.

In both the 1849 and the 1858 articles on Poe, Willis has accounts of Poe's actual position and a description of his behavior:

Some four or five years since, when editing a daily paper in this city, Mr. Poe was employed by us, for several months, as critic and sub-editor. This was our first personal acquaintance with him. He resided with his wife and mother, at Fordham, a few miles out of town, but was at his desk in the office, from nine in the morning till the evening paper went to press ... With his pale, beautiful and intellectual face, as a reminder of what genius was in him, it was impossible, of course, not to treat him always with deferential courtesy, and, to our occasional request that he would not probe too deep in a criticism, or that he would erase a passage, colored too highly with his resentments against society and mankind, he readily and courteously assented — far more yielding than most men, we thought, on points so excusably sensitive.(2)

It was his business to sit at a desk, in a corner of the editorial room, ready to be called upon for any of the miscellaneous work of the moment — announcing news, condensing statements, answering correspondents, noticing amusements — everything but the writing of a ‘leader’, or constructing any article upon which his peculiar idiosyncracy of mind could be impressed. Yet you remember how absolutely and how good humoredly ready he was for any suggestion, how punctually and industriously reliable, in the following out of the wish once expressed, how cheerful and present-minded in his work when he might excusably have been so listless and abstracted. We loved the man for the entireness of fidelity with which he served us — himself or any vanity of his own, so utterly put aside.(3) [page 405:]

The paper itself contains some valuable, information in this regard. A paragraph in the Weekly Mirror. January 28, shows that Willis was Poe's immediate superior:

“A Reply for a Needful Purpose.” The Boston Transcript, after correcting its copied statement that Willis is to be the theatrical critic” for a newspaper, observes, ‘It takes three able-bodied men’, Morris, Willis & Fuller, ‘to conduct the New York Mirror, and it would not seem at all surprising if one of that able triumvirate might find time to be the theatrical critic for a new journal. We are requested by one of our partners to state that the second in the firm is the sole conductor of the Editoria1 part of the paper, that we first is employed solely in its business, and that the third is to be solely occupied with the Mirror Library, now ready to re-commence its issues. For the opinions of the Daily paper, Mr. Willis is alone the gate-keeper, and by himself or by his direction, all its principal articles are written.(1)

The editorial column explains an December 4: “we” have been ill and trying to keep on at the same time. “We have, of course, been but too happy to let the nearest man take our place at every possible opportunity.” On December 2 there appeared on the front page an extract from a Nashua paper accusing a prominent physician of criminal quackery. The article

obtained admission into these columns an Monday last, in the absence and without the knowledge of either of the editors ... Without absolute health, the eternal vigilance required for the merely discreet editing of a daily paper is harassing and painful in the extreme.(2)

A series of editorial remarks about Poe's criticism of Longfellow's Waif gives emphasis. On February 5:

A friend, who is a very fine critic, gave us, not long since, a review of this delightful new book. Perfectly sure that any thing from that source was a treasure for our paper, we looked up from a half-read proof to [page 406:] run our eye hastily over it, and gave it to the printer — not, however, without mentally differing from the writer as to the drift of the last sentence: — We conclude our notes (etc ... ).  . . Notwithstanding the haste with which it passed through our attention (for we did not see it in proof) the question of admission was submitted to a principle in mind; and, in admitting it, we did, by Longfellow, as we would have him do by us. It was a literary charge, by a pen that never records an opinion without some supposed good reason, and only injurious to Longfellow, (to our belief) while circulating, unreplied to, in conversation-dom ... (1)

On February 24:

To gratify a friend we say that if our playful notice of our assistant critic's notice of ‘Longfellow's Waif’, a few days since, did not give the impression that we (Willis) fully dissented from our assistant as to the charge against. Longfellow ... (2)

Poe's position, then, was completely subordinate; he was a mechanical paragraphist; his work was constantly under Willis’ supervision. The salary must have been very small; it is probable, however, that Poe got extra pay for his longer articles. Willis errs in saying that Poe did “every thing but the writing of a ‘leader’, or constructing any article upon which his peculiar idiosyncracy of mind could be impressed.” He has forgotten the series of articles on authors’ pay and copyright; he has forgotten such pieces as “Magazine Literature,” “Does the Drama of the Day Deserve Support”; he has forgotten reviews such as “Lowell's Conversations” and “Longfellow's Waif.” On several occasions Poe has even an article in the editor's sacred column, It may be significant, however, that except for the authors’ pay series, these articles appear in the January and February numbers. It may suggest that not until January did [page 407:] Willis promise extra pay for such work.

The greater majority of the notices are quite brief. In fact, the numbers through November 7 contain only eight notices. On that date the Mirror printed a letter requesting the editor to include book-notices. Even after this there is through November and December an average of only one notice an issue.

Willis and Poe were not the only critics an the paper. An editorial paragraph of November 29 reads:

A few days ago, our copy of this book was accidentally tied up in a bundle of neglected novelties, which we sent to a literary friend for review, and once more reviewed; and, it appears, less considerately.(1)

The “literary friend” cannot be Poe; there would be no need to tie up and send a bundle of books across the office to him. There is some evidence which, shall later be demonstrated, that this critic is J. T. Headley. The style of these three — Poe, Willis, and Headley (?) — are sufficiently distinct on the whole. It is not at all improbable that Willis called on other friends for reviews. It may be that some of the notices I have assigned to Willis are in reality the work of another critic. Such attributions, however, will serve our principal purpose here in indicating that such notices are not the work of Poe.

There are many references to Poe in the paper. It has been observed that with one exception — the editorial preface to ‘Authors' Pay in America” — when the reference is to an article printed in the Mirror [page 408:] It is in veiled terms “A friend, who is a very fine critic,” “our assistant critic. ” In the January 20 paper Willis has: “The criticisms on the ‘Waif’ which lately appeared in this paper were written in our office by an able though very critical hand ...(1) There are several puffs of Poe — in no way suggesting his relation with the Mirror the editorial column of the paper of October 8:

There will doubtless be criticisms by Lowell and Poe — each in a very different spirit from the other, but both Damascene to the temper of the weapon — of a certain new book just published by the Langley's.(2)

The January 20 and 21 issues reprint Lowell's Graham's article on Poe. In a prefatory note Willis practically offers Poe at auction:

We wonder, by the ways that, with so fine a critic at command for an editor, some New York publisher does not establish a Monthly Review, devoted exclusively to high critical purposes. Poe has genius and taste of his own, as will as the necessary science, and the finest discriminative powers; and such a wheel of literature should not be without axle and linch-pin.(3)

He has a paragraph in the February 20 number on “Edgar Poe's lecture”:

The decapitation of the criminal who did not know his head was off till it fell into his hand as he was bowling, is a Poe-krerish similitude, but it conveys an idea of the Damascene slicing of the critical blade of Mr. Poe. On Friday night we are to have his ‘Lecture on the Poets of America’, and those whose who would witness fine carving will probably be there. Besides the division of sensitive membrane, however, there will be many a bright flash from the keen temper of the blade itself, and altogether the feast will be Epicurean to all but the sufferers.(4) [page 409:]

On September 2 Thomas. Informs Pas that his new book of verse, The Beechen Tree has been published. He has no copy at hand, or he would contrive to send Poe one. “You know how much I value a good word from you my friend.”(1) On October 10 he sends Poe the book; On December 10 he reproaches Poe for not acknowledging receipt of it.(2) On January 4 Poe answers:

My reason for not replying instanter was that I was just then making arrangements which, if fully carried out, would have enabled me to do you justice in a manner satisfactory to both of us — but these arrangements fell throw, after my being kept is suspense for months — and I could find no good opportunity of putting in a word anywhere that would have done you service. You know I do not, live in town — very seldom visit it — and, of course, am not in the way of matters and things am I used to be ... in about three weeks, I shall move into the city, and recommence a life of activity under better auspices, I hope than ever before. Then I may be able to do something.(3)

On January 16 Poe wrote Griswold in reply to a request for information in relation to his forthcoming Prose Writers of America:

If you can do this (accept these apologies and meet me as a friend) and forget the past, let me know where I shall call on you — or come and see me at the Mirror Office any morning about 10.(4)

Poe was thus, as his contributions for January and February suggest, still working for Willis. There use perhaps no precise falsehood in the letter to Thomas. Poe remained in the Mirror office from nine in the morning until the edition went to press, which must have been early or middle afternoon. A remark of Willis in the 1849 article suggests that ordinarily Poe went straight out to Fordham when his work was completed. In a [page 410:] sense, then, he did seldom “visit” New York; and his confinement to the Mirror office may possibly have prevented his being “in any way of matters and things.” But this is stretching a point. It is quite clear, I think, that Poe intended to deceive Thomas. Than purpose can scarcely have been to avoid reviewing the book. He admired Thomas’ poetry sufficient to be able to notice it without embarrassment; in fact the November 39 Mirror has a notice of The Beechen Tree, which I am convinced is Poe's — a notice which is generally commendatory. The only satisfactory explanation at which I can arrive, is that Poe was ashamed of the position forced on him by necessity and that he tried to keep it as secret as possible. Otherwise there is no reason for his not informing Thomas of the Mirror notice of his poems which obviously Thomas had not seen. The whole series of references to Poe in the Mirror substantiates this theory. After that first reference to Poe as author of the articles as writers’ pay, there is nothing to suggest that the assistant critic was Poe; and not until arrangements with the Broadway Journal begun to take more or less definite shape did Poe contribute any thing for the Mirror which could easily be recognised as his, by someone who did not suspect his association with the Mirror. Referring in the Journal to his Longfellow criticism he still veils his language:

For the ‘Evening Mirror’ of January 14, before my editorial connection with the ‘Broadway Journal’, I furnished a brief criticism of Professor Longfellow's ‘Waif’.(1) [page 411:]

This January 4 letter to Thomas suggests that during the winter months Poe had been depending on someone for backing in the magazine project — perhaps Lowell, perhaps Chivers. This project had, of course, fallen through. He was planning, it seems, to leave the Mirror and join the staff of the Journal in “about three weeks.” These arrangements were not completed quite so quickly however. On February he wrote Griswold:

I have taken a 3rd interest in the ‘Broadway Journal’ and will be glad if you could send me anything, at any time, in the way of Literary Intelligence.(1)

The last article in the Mirror which can be given to Poe definitely is the “Plagiarism” of February 17. There are items definitely his for February 15 and 12. The last notice which could possibly be his is in the February 20 [[issue]]. It appears, then, that Poe left the Mirror in the third week of February. There is no announcement in the Mirror of his withdrawal. Willis wrote of it in the 1849 article:

With a prospect of taking the lead in another periodical, he, at last, voluntarily gave up his employment with us, and, through all this considerable period, we have seen but one presentment of the man — quiet, patient, industrious, and most gentlemanly person commanding the utmost respect and good feeling by his unvarying deportment and ability.(2)

And in the 1858:

When he left us we were very reluctant to part with him, but we could not object, as it was to better has fortunes. He was to take the lead in another periodical.(3)

There is no evidence of any later contribution of Poe's to the Mirror. It was not long after that Willis severed connections with the [page 412:] paper, and Morris soon followed him. When Poe sued the Mirror for printing English's defamatory article and got $225 damages, Hiram Fuller was publisher and editor.

Poe's later relations with Willis were most pleasant. That gentleman was one of the truest, most faithful, and must appreciative and understanding of his friends. In the 1849 and 1858 articles Willis speaks of their later relations and gives his testimony of admiration and of “almost reverence”:

Residing as he did in the country, we never met Mr. Poe in hours of leisure; but he frequently called on us afterwards, at our place of business, and we met him often in the street — invariably the same sad-mannered, winning and refined gentleman, such as we had always known him ... (1)

Poe was one of our ‘boys’. We both loved him. He was rebaptized, and adopted over our inkstand of appreciation and admiration.(2)

Two Poe letters give evidence of his calling at Willis’ “place of business”:

I have, not been to Fordham yet, having just arrived an hour ago and as I am on my way to the ‘Home Journal‘(3) office. ... (4)

Should you have any trouble finding me, inquire at the office of the ‘Home Journal’ ... (5)

Poe said of Willis in the “Literati” article of May, 1846:

He has innumerable warm friends, however, and is himself a warm friend. He is impulsive, generous, bold, impetuous, vacillating, irregularly energetic — apt to be hurried into error, but incapable of deliberate wrong.(6) [page 413:]

As far as personal relationships are concerned, this period of Poe's career must have been one of the most satisfying, as, in other respects, it was the most galling.


[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 398:]

1.  Poe-Anton, New York, June, 1844. Gr. MSS. Phot. in UVL. This is the first draft of the letter sent.

2.  Chivers-Poe, Oaky Grove, Ga. May 15, 1844. Gr. MSS. Phot. in UVL.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 399:]

1.  Poe-Chivers, New York, July 10, 1844. Gr. MSS. Phot. in UVL.

2.  Poe-Lowell, New York, August 18, 1844. Harvard MSS. Phot. in UVL.

3.  Poe-Thomas, New York, September 8, 1844. Gr. MSS. Phot. in UVL.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 400:]

1.  Home Journal, October 13, 1859. Ingram Col. UVL.

2.  Willis-Morris, Idlewild„ October 17, 1858, Home Journal, October 30, 1858. Ingram Col. UVL.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 401:]

1.  There is some hint of this trouble in the Poe-Lowell letter, N.Y., October 28, 1844: “A host of small troubles growing from the one trouble of poverty, but which I will not trouble you with in detail, have hitherto prevented me from thanking you for the Biography.” Gr. MSS. Phot. in UVL.

2.  “Doings of Gotham,” Letter II, May 21, 1844. Spannuth and Mabbott (eds.), Doings of Gotham, p. 34.

3.  “Doings of Gotham,” Letter VI, June 18, 1844. Ibid., pp.67-8.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 402:]

1.  Poe-Mrs. Hale, New York, May 29, 1844. Copy in UVL from New York Times, January 28, 1919.

2.  Home Journal, October 13, 1849. Ingram Col. UVL.

3.  EM, October 8, 1844.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 403:]

1.  Poe-Craig, New York, October 24, 1844. GR. MSS. Phot. in UVL. Copy by Mrs. Clemm.

2.  Willis-Morris, Idlewild, October 17, 1858. Home Journal, October 30, 1858. Ingram Col, UVL.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 404:]

1.  Poe-Lowell, New York, October 28, 1844. Gr. MSS. Phot. in UVL.

2.  Home Journal, October 13, 1849, Ingram Col. UVL.

3.  Willis-Morris, Idlewild, October 17, 1844. Home Journal, October 30, 1858. Ingram Col. UVL.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 405:]

1.  WM, January 28, 1845, p. 229.

2.  WM, December 4, 1844.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 406:]

1.  EM, February 5, 1845.

2.  EM, February 14, 2845,

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 407:]

1.  EM, November 29, 1844.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 408:]

1.  EM, January 20, 1845.

2.  EM, October 8, 1844.

3.  EM, February 20, 1845.

4.  EM, February 20, 1845.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 409:]

1.  Thomas-Poe, Washington, September 2, 1844, Gr. MSS. Phot. in UVL.

2.  Thomas-Poe, October 10, 1844. Gr. MSS. Phot. in UVL. and Thomas-Poe, December 10, 1844. Gr. MSS. Phot. in UVL.

3.  Poe-Thomas, New York, January 4, 1845. Huntington MSS. Phot. In UVL. Unprinted.

4.  Poe-Griswold, New York, January 16, 1845. Gr. MSS. Photo in UVL,

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 410:]

1.  BJ, I, 147; H, XII, 41.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 411:]

1.  Poe-Griswold, February 24, 1844. New York. Gr. MSS. Phot. In UVL.

2.  Home Journal, October 13, 1849. Ingram Col. UVL.

3.  Willis-Morris, Idlewild, October 17, 1858. Home Journal, October 30, 1858. Ingram Col. UVL.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 412:]

1.  Home Journal, October 13, 1849. Ingram Col. UVL.

2.  Willis-Morris, Idlewild, October 17, 1858. Home Journal, October 30, 1858. Ingram Col. UVL.

3.  The Home Journal, was established by Morris and Willis February 14, 1846.

4.  Poe-Arthur H. Collins, Hew York, December 7, 1847. Clipping in UVL. (There is no indication of the source). [[The source is probably the Richmond Times Dispatch, April 15, 1935. Ostrom considers the letter “very doubtful,” and the date of Dec. 7, 1847 is used by Joseph Cosey in a number of Poe forgeries. — JAS]]

5.  Poe-Hirst, New York, May 3, 1848. Huntington MSS. Phot. in UVL.

6.  GLB, XXXII, 198; H, XV, 18.


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[S:0 - CCWEAP, 1941] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Articles - A Canon of the Critical Works of EAP (W. D. Hull) (Part IV, Chapter I)