Sarah Helen Whitman, Seeress of Providence, (1940), title page and table of contents

Notes:

John Grier Varner, Jr. was born on March 30, 1905, in Mount Pleasant, TX, and was raised in Denton, TX, outside Dallas and Fort Worth. He died on September 13, 1978, in Austin, TX. He earned his B.A. from Austin College in 1926, teaching for the next four years in Mississippi and Tennessee. He earned his M.A. (1932) and Ph.D. (1940) at the University of Virginia. (At the University of Virginia, he was the Assistant Director of the Virginia Glee-Club, 1934-1936). He was an assistant professor of English at Washington and Lee University (1938-1943), and a professor of English at the University of Texas (1947-1972). During WWII, he was considered too old for combat, but offered his special expertise in Spanish to the US State Department and was sent to Latin America, where he spent most of the next several years in Venezuela. He married Ruby Jeanette Johnson (1909-1992) on April 29, 1939, whom he apparently met during his studies at the University of Virginia. Together, they wrote several books: The Florida of the Inca (1951, a translation of Garcilaso de la Vega's first-hand account of de Soto's conquest of Florida), El Inca: The Life and Times of Garcilaso de Vega, (1968, a project that took more than 14 years to complete) and Dogs of the Conquest. The last of these was completed by his wife after his death and published in 1983 by the University of Oklahoma Press. Outside of his studies in Spanish, his main interest was Edgar Allan Poe. In addition to several articles, his best known work on Poe is Edgar Allan Poe and the Saturday Evening Courier (1933). His 1932 Master's thesis was Poe and Mrs. Whitman: A Study of the Documents of Sarah Helen Whitman. His papers are in the HRCL, at the University of Texas, at Austin.

Technically, the contents of this dissertation are protected by copyright, but with Dr. Varner himself having died in 1978 and his wife in 1992, and there being no readily identifiable heir or estate, it has not been possible to secure formal permission. The University of Virginia was contacted prior to initiating this electronic edition. Although that institution was very interested in the project, it did not feel that it could assert any claims over copyright, and was therefore unable to grant formal approval. This text, then, is presented under a broad assumption of fair use, and with the idea that Dr. Varner would have been pleased to have his work widely available for use, for educational purposes and without any charge for access. If a reasonable claim for copyright can be documented, please contact the Poe Society of Baltimore to arrange for permission, or to request that we remove the material.

Because the original disseration was prepared on a ordinary typewriter, with very little available in regard to formatting options, some liberties have been taken in this electronic presentation for the sake of improved appearance and readability. The use of underlines, for example, has been interpreted as indicating italics.