Text: Benjamin Franklin Fisher IV, “Fugitive Poe References: A Bibliography ,” Poe Studies, December 1981, Vol. XIV, No. 2, 13:25-30


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Fugitive Poe References:
A Bibliography

University of Mississippi

The primary purpose of the “fugitive” Poe bibliography is to bring together recent books, essays, and miscellaneous publications (since about 1960) that do not focus on Poe but which discuss the author within a larger perspective or with a special angle of vision. Although this bibliography also lists a few works dealing specifically with Poe that have been overlooked in other bibliographies, the entries here are principally brief items buried in longer works under different headings, or in works that were on first publication not readily accessible. For information facilitating this list, I am grateful to Walter Albert, Hal Blythe, Stephen Booth, Michael Burduck, J. Lasley Dameron, Kent Ljungquist, Charlie Sweet, Craig Werner, Elizabeth S. Yost, and William J. Zimmer, Jr.

Allen, Hervey. “A Critical Anthology,” Satsurday Review of Literature, 3 October 1931, pp. 163-164. [Allen deplores Louis Untermeyer’s “pruning” of stanzas in “To Annie” and sees a flaw in the critique that imagery in “To Helen,” pace Untermeyer, does “not show a logical connection.”]

Allen, Walter. The Short Story in English (Oxford, New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1981). [Poe is analyzed in “The Modern Story,” part ii. After remarking the uneasiness of Anglo-Saxon critics with Poe, Allen scrutinizes “Usher“ — which at first seems overwritten, highly sensational, “a farrago of extreme Romantic nonsense“ — as a chronicle of an “abnormal romantic mind.” Poe strengthened the Gothic tradition in American literature.]

Andrews, C. E. “Methods of Poetry,” Saturday Review of Literature, 7 November 1931, p. 260. [Speaking of Edward D. Snyder’s Hypnotic Poetry (1930), Andrews comments on “spell-weaving” in “Annabel Lee,” a poem that may convey no clear meaning.]

Anon. “At the New Gallery,” Punch, 2 June 1894, p. 257. [At an exhibition, an art critic sees a terracotta of Poe’s raven perched upon Minerva: “This is No. 412, and may be named The Dissolute Bird; or, The Raven on the Bust.”]

———————. “Notes,” Nation, 27 November 1884, p. 460. [Compliments G. E. Woodberry’s “Poe’s Legendary Years” in the December 1884 Atlantic for righting the romantic legend fostered by J. H. Ingram about Poe’s “visit” to Russia and Paris between 1827 and 1833 and about the novel in Sue’s manner that supposedly resulted from adventures there. Noting Woodberry’s description of Poe’s literary output as “a black growth,” the commentator remarks that ‘‘the connection between character and literature is doubtful ground“ — an interesting early theory that Poe the man differed from Poe the writer.]

————————. “Recent Poetry,” Nation, 18 December 1884, p. 528. [Lander is the South’s first poet because Poe was born in Boston.]

————————. “The Revue Politique et Litteraire,” Nation, 2 October 1884, p. 290. [The reviewer criticizes both [column 2:] Poe’s dictum on brevity in poetry and a French critic who, in the 6 September issue of the Revue, sees that dictum as a consequence of restlessness in the American national character.]

————————. “Stephen King,” People, 29 December-5 January 1981, pp. 53-54. [“Not since Edgar Allan Poe . . . has a writer so terrified — and delighted — the nation.” King is the “new master of the macabre, a Poe of the pulps.”]

Armour, Richard. American Lit Relit (New York, Toronto, London: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1964). [The Poe section provides a comic biography, ringing changes upon Poe’s supposed craving for alcohol, opium, and gambling, then spoofs several of his best known works, concluding that with the repetitions in poems like “The Raven” and with the horrors in tales like “Tell-Tale Heart,” it is no wonder that Poe took to drink!]

————————. It All Started with Freshman English (New York, Toronto, Dusseldorf, and Panama: McGrawHill Book Co., 1973). [Beneath this comic treatment of Poe’s principal themes and methods lies an understanding of the ways of his imagination.]

Baker, Carlos. ed. Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters: 1917-1961 (New York: The Ernest Hemingway Foundation, Inc., 1981). [Hemingway’s letter to Malcolm Cowley, 14 November 1945, mentions Poe’s awful life, his sending for the Portable Poe, his anticipation of re-reading Poe, and, having read the edition, his inability to re-read any more.]

Bate, Walter Jackson. John Keats ( Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1963). [Keats’ experiments in sound, particularly his assonance from Hyperion through the odes, are compared with those of Poe, Swinburne, and Lanier.]

Beaver, Harold. “On the Verge of Eternity,” Times Literary Supplement, 21 November 1980, p. 1336. [In this lengthy review-essay of recent commentary on Flannery O‘Connor, Beaver notes the influence of The Humorous Tales of E. A. Poe upon the modern southern writer and her mingling of humor and terror. He queries: ‘‘Was she some latter-day Poe, then, converted to Catholicism?”]

Bell, Michael Davitt. The Development of American Romance: The Sacrifice of Relation ( Chicago and London: Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1980). [Ch. five is devoted to Poe, whose fiction reveals a contradiction between his desired “effect” and that achieved, as does his language, where purity conflicts with suggestions, at times, of obscenity. “Grotesque” and “Arabesque” respectively imply distortion and “purity.” In his theories of “originality” Poe tried to link expressions and their origins. Thus, some poems and tales (“The Oval Portrait,” the first “To Helen,” and “The Assignation”) deal with transformations of life and art. Unlike other American romantics, Poe de-emphasizes history in his concern for “cosmic self-creation and self-destruction.”]

Bloom, Harold. “Foreword,” The Heisenberg Variations, by John Bricuth (Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1976), n. p. [“As a southern poet, Bricuth recalls aspects of Poe. . . .”]

Briggs, Asa. “Manners, Morals and Taste,” The Nineteenth Century: The Contradictions of Progress, ed. Asa Briggs ( London: Thames and Hudson, 1970), pp. 291-326. [Poe influenced not merely French writers, but the musician Debussy, who admired “The Fall of the House of Usher.”]

Brown, Malcolm. “The Craftsman as Critic,‘’ The Man of Wax: Critical Essays on George Moore (New York: New York Univ. Press, 1971), pp. 319-358. [Moore believed that he admired Poe’s work much more than did Poe’s contemporaries — a subject that invites additional research.]

Brown, Marshall. The Shape of German Romanticism ( Ithaca and London: Cornell Univ. Press, 1979), pp. 42, 151, 210. [For Poe, a center of emotion or stability can indicate a demonic fixation. The divine heartbeat in Eureka shows only the central point as divine. In gothic tradition, poetic interpolations [page 26:] are usually considered to interrupt the prose and thus indicate mental alienation: in “The Assignation” a secret is revealed, and in “Usher” subjection to a “ruling passion” disclosed by the poems within the tales.]

Burger, Nash K. “Writer in Residence: The Last Word,” New York Times Book Review, 7 October 1973, p. 55. [Burger discusses Poe’s career at the University of Virginia and tersely surveys his later career.]

Bush, Douglas. “Scholars, Poor and Simple,” Atlantic Monthly, 166 (1940), 498-503. [Commenting upon sensational lures in biographies, Bush asks “Who would write or read about Poe if it were not for alcohol, the child-wife, and the platonic seraglio?”]

Butcher, Philip. George W. Cable (New York: Twayne, 1962). [Cable is compared with Poe as a great southern writer. Late in the nineteenth century, Cable was ranked as a fictionist alongside Poe, Hawthorne, and European novelists.]

“Callendar, Newgate.” “Crime,” New York Times Book Review, 2 March 1980, p. 21. [The author sketches the nature of the “Edgar” annual awards for detective-mystery fiction and notes Poe’s significance in fathering this type of writing]

Cameron, Kenneth W., ed. Literary Studies and Criticism by Franklin Benjamin Sanborn ( Hartford, Conn.: Transcendental Books, 1980). [The critiques of Poe reveal Sanborn’s chariness.]

————————. The New England Writers and the Press (Hartford, Conn.: Transcendental Books, 1980). [Among the convenient reprints from difficult-to-locate New England newspapers and other periodicals are many items on Poe, including a reprint of “The Business Man” (Manufacturers and Farmers Journal, Providence, R. I., 11 May 1843, p. 4), imitations of Poe’s poems including several parodies, and information concerning the Chivers-Poe relationship.]

Carlson, Eric W. Review of Carl Fehrman, Poetic Creation: Inspiration and Craft, Poe Stsudies Association Newsletter, 8, No. 2 (Fall 1980), 2. [Carlson praises Fehrman’s overall critique of Poe’s aesthetics but points out that Poe is more romantic than Fehrman implies.]

Carpenter, Richard C. Thomas Hardy (New York: Twayne, 1964). [Hardy’s short stories belong to oral tradition ‘of the tale” rather than to the “consciously artistic” short fictions of Poe or Chekov. The “grotffque situations” in “The Marchioness of Stonehenge” are “worthy of Browning or Poe.”]

“Charles, Hal.” “The Talk-Show Murder,” Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, 23 July 1980, pp. 112-118. [In this story, vital clues reside in the letters P O E. One character claims descent from Poe.]

————————. “What Happened to the 29th Pilgrim; or, Inspiration, No — Perspiration, Yes,” The Poisoned Pen, 4 No. 3 (June 1981), 3-4. [Noting how often writers of detective stories depend upon their reading of newspapers, Charles cites Poe’s practice in “Marie Roget.” Likewise, all writers are readers, and John Dickson Carr based his lockedroom mysteries upon Poe’s.]

Charvat, William. Literary Publishing in America: 1790-1850 (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1959). [Charvat discusses Poe and the literary marketplace of his time.]

Christopher, Nicholas. “Walt Whitman at the Reburial of Poe,” New Yorker, 25 August 1980, p. 93. [Through Whitman’s “voice,” this poem analyzes Poesque themes and the question of Poe’s success as a creative artist.]

Clemens, Cyril. “Housman as a Conversationalist,” Mark Twain Quarterly, 1(1936), 9-10, 13, 18. [Poe was read by Housman, who noted that the American would not have had to visit Paris to describe it vividly, as he did in “Murders.”]

Clyne, Patricia Edwards. “Thomas O. Mabbott as Teacher,” Books at Iowa, 34 (April 1981), 29-36. [This portrait of the famous scholar provides interesting anecdotes concerning his [column 2:] Poe scholarship and praises his teaching and his influence upon students, many among whom contributed information Mabbott included in his Collected Works volumes.]

Cournos, John. Introduction, American Short Stories of the Nineteenth Century (London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd; New York: E. P. Dutton, 1930; rpt. 1965). [Poe aimed primarily at being a poet, but financial necessities turned him toward short fiction, of which he has left excellent specimens. His satires may have resulted from his personal bitterness about the shift.]

Crawford, Gary William. Review of Jack Sullivan, Elegant Nightmares: The English Ghost Story from LeFanu to Blackwood; and Asa Briggs, Night Visitors: The Rise and Fall of the English Ghost Story, College Literature, 7 (1980), 82-84. [Crawford mentions Briggs’ attention to Poe in her survey.]

Davis, Richard Beale, C. Hugh Holman, and Louis D. Rubin, Jr., eds. Editorial Not=, Southern Writing: 1585-1920 (New York: Odyssey Press, 1970). [Poe, the greatest writer of the antebellum south, was out of step with literary trends of his time. His poetry is noted for “extravagant imagery, haunting rhythm, and a fascination with sound,‘’ as well as for its anticipation of modern angst. His tales divide fairly evenly into “tales of effect“ — like those from Blackwood’s — and “tales of ratiocination,” which anticipate the modern detective tale. Poe was an Aristotelian critic in an age when Platonic criticism prevailed.]

Delmer, F. Sefton. English Literature from Beowulf to T. S. Eliot (Berlin: Weidmannsche Verlagsbuchbandlung, 1951, 1960). [The Poe entry places his fiction, “Gothic in character,” much higher than his verse.]

Duffield, Howard. “Who Moved the Stone?” The Bool man, [NY], 71 (1930), 469-470. [In a critique of Frank Morison’s novel, Duffield comparff the handling of psychology of the characters in Jerusalem between the time of Christ’s arrest and the women’s discovery of the empty tomb with Poe’s method in “Murders” and “The Purloined Letter.”]

Eng, Stephen. Review of S. T. Joshi, ea., H. P. Lovecraft: Four Decades of Criticism, Gothic, 2 (1980), 55. [Poe’s name is “usual” in Lovecraft criticism.]

Finch, G. A. “A Fatal Attraction,” Armchair Detective, 13 (1980), 112-124. [Distinguishing actual from literary detectives in the nineteenth century, Finch asserts that “Poe’s detective carried credentials that were established in the library,” that the appeal of his stories is mythic in the sense argued by Brigid Brophy, and that the arbitrary sequence of action resulting when a detective affects others was Poe’s contribution to detective fiction.]

Fisher, Benjamin Franklin IV. “Arlin Turner 1909-1980,” University of Mississippi Studies in English, NS 1 (1980), 3-4. [Turner’s training under Killis Campbell initiated a lifelong interest in Poe which bore fruit in Turner’s own publications and his training of several Ph.D’s. who have contributed significantly to Poe studies.]

————————. “Best-Selling Horror,” review of Srephen King, The Shining and Night Shift, Gothic, 1 (1980), 31-32. [Fisher notes King’s debts to “Masque” in The Shining, as well as John Dickson Carr’s in Corpse in the Waxworks, or the Waxworks Murders, deprecating the former and praising the latter.]

————————. Review of John Ball, ea., The Mystery Story, Poe Studies Association Newsletter, 8 No. 1 (Spring 1980), 3-4. [Calling attention to Poe’s prominence in popular culture, notably in detection literature, Fisher points out pervasive inaccuracies about Poe among critics of detective fiction.]

————————. “Frederick Irving Anderson, Adventures of the Infallible Godahl,” Poisoned Pen, 4 No. 4 (April 1981), 24-25. [The wily rogue Godahl follows in the footsteps of Dupin with analytical-intuitive abilities. Anderson also recalls Poe in wordplay.] [page 27:]

————————. “Frederick Irving Anderson. The Notorious Sophie Lang,” The Poisoned Pen, 4 (June 1981), 20-21. [Detective Parr fails in his attempts to capture Sophie because he is merely logical, with no intuition, while the latter, like Dupin, is a “detective god” who fathoms the schemes of her rivals and ( outrageously ) outwits them. See also The Mystery FANcier, 4 (November-December 1980), p. 46.]

“The German Gothic Novel,” Gothic, 2 (1980), 52. [Poe’s mesmeric tales may be adumbrated in Follenius’ continuation of Schiller’s Der Geisterseher (1789).]

————————. “Horror by the Bucket — and the Fingerbowl,” Gothic, 1 (1980), 67-68. [Commenting upon Les Daniels’ The Silver Skull and Robert Aickman’s Painted Devils, Fisher contrasts the effort of the former to merge the tangible and intangible with Poe’s technique and comparff the latter’s “Larger than Oneself” with Poe’s “Masque.”]

————————. Review of Jayne K. Kribbs, ed. An Annotated Bibliography of American Literary Periodicals, 1741-1850 (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1977), Literary Research Newsletter, 5 (1980), 149-152. [Flaws in the Poe scholarship are noted.]

————————. “The Poets of the Nineties,” Victorian Poetry, 18 (1980), 277-280. [Fisher discusses Poe’s impact upon J. K. Huysmans and thence upon the British writers of the 1890’s, particularly the “Decadents,” and notes that Poe merged the features of poetry and prose fiction.]

————————. Review of Arlin Turner, Nathaniel Hawthorne: A Biography, Poe Studies Association Newsletter, 8 No. 2 (Fall 1980), 4. [Fisher notes the similarities between Poe’s and Hawthorne’s initial tale writing and their miniscule incomes therefrom. Hawthorne esteemed Poe more as a tale writer than as a critic. See also same author’s reviews in University of Mississippi Studies, NS 1 (1980), 131-133.]

Flanagan, Graeme. Robert Bloch: A Bio-Bibliography (Canberra City, Australia: Graeme Flanagan, 1971). [Flanagan provides particulars of Bloch’s writing “The Man Who Collected Poe,” Thomas Ollive Mabbott’s subsequent urging that Bloch complete “The Light-House,” and his ultimate composition of an ending for Poe’s final, uncompleted tale.]

Frank, Frederick S., Gary William Crawford, and Benjamin Franklin Fisher IV. “The 1978 Bibliography of Gothic Studies,” Gothic, 1 (1979), 6S-67; 2 (1980), 48-52. [Listings include Poe and Poe-related items.]

Franklin, H. Bruce. The Victim as Criminal and Artist: Literature from the American Prison (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1978). [Franklin finds racism common among writers of Poe’s times, citing Jupiter in “The Gold-Bug” as an exemplary view of Negro fear of supernaturalism. “Edgar Allen (sic) Poe created the archetypical detective story in which a lone man of genius, relying on his intellect, deftly solves mysteries which puzzle the populace and confuse the authorities.”]

Fuller, Edmund. “Changing Attitudes toward Death and Dying,” Wall Street Journal, 9 March 1981, p. 22. [No writer was so obsessed with premature burial as was Poe.]

Gargano, James W. “James’s The Sacred Fount: The Phantasmagorical Made Evidential,” Henry James Review, 2 (1980), 49-60. [James’ “mingling of realistic detail and imaginative hyperbole” in works like “The Private Life,” “Owen Wingrave,” “Sir Edmund Orme,” “The Jolly Corner,” The Turn of the Screw and The Sense of the Past link him to Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville.]

Garrett, John. “The Eternal Appeal of the Gothic,” The Sphinx, 8 (1977) 1-7. [Hoffmann influenced Poe who in turn influenced Baudelaire.]

Gatto, John Taylor, “Lovecraft and the Grotesque Tradition,” Nyctalops, 13 (May 1977), 7-11. [Outlining antecedents for [column 2:] the twentieth-century writers, Gatto mentions Poe’s humor and aligns it with that of Bosch, Bruegel, and Hoffmann.]

Gemmett, Robert J. William Beckford (Boston: G. K. Hall 1977) . [Poe admired Beckford’s work, and his own grotesquerie and concern with perversity reflect affinities with the older writer.]

Ginsberg, Allen. Mind Breaths: Poems 1972-1977 (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1977) [Ginsberg’s vision of Poe appears in two poems under a single title, “Haunting Poe’s Baltimore”: “Poe in Dust” (about a visit to the grave) and “Hearing ‘Lenore’ Read Aloud: 203 Amity Street” (about his visit to the Baltimore Poe House as a group of school children read).]

Gohdes, Clarence. “On Scholarship and Southern Literature,” William and Mary Quarterly, 16 (1936), 81-87. [Before W. P. Trent’s biography of Simms (1892), only Poe, among literary figures in the old south, received critical acclaim. “Poe was for scholars more a national than a Southern figure.” The Poe texts by Harrison, Campbell, Whitty, and Mabbott are among the few good editions of southern writers.]

———————— , “Some Recollections of Jay B. Hubbell,” University of Mississippi Studies in English, NS 1 (1980), 20-31. [Gohdes notes Hubbell’s teaching of Poe and his friendship with David K. Jackson, who has become a well-known Poe scholar.]

Groff, Mary. “All Too True,” Poisoned Pen, 2 No. 6 (November-December 1979) 18-19. [This biographical sketch of Mary Rogers provides information that was the prototype for the murdered girl in “Marie Roget.”]

Guilds, John Caldwell, ed. Nineteenth-Century Southern Fiction (Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill, 1970). [This reprint of “The Gold-Bug” from the text of 1845 Tales includes a sketch of Poe’s career and locates the charm of Poe’s most “southern” tale in interplay between Legrand and Jupiter.]

Haberman, Clyde. “A Murder the Rue of Poe Street,” New York Times, 9 September 1980, p. B3. [This account of the years Poe spent in New York City gives special attention to the renaming of part of West 84th Street to “Edgar Allen Poe Street“ — and the inevitable misspelling.]

Hall, Radclyffe, “American Literature in England,” The Bookman [NY], 65 (1927), 311-315. [“In 1935 (sic) we find Edgar Allan Poe making his debut in prose.” His “literary position in England soon became unassailable. An American by birth, he was really a world writer, one whose subjects were in no way confined to his own country.”]

Henderson, Randi. “E. L. Doctorow: Uncomfortable with Success,” Gazette Telegraph [Colorado Springs], 11 April 1981, p. 39D. [Doctorow stated in an interview, “My parents named me for Edgar Allan Poe, I have no idea why.” His early reading included much pulp fiction and horror stories.]

Hillyer, Robert, In Pursuit of Poetry (New York, Toronto, & London: McGraw-Hill, 1960). [Hillyer mentions Poe’s oversmooth cadencing, his affinities more with the twentieth century than with the nineteenth century, and his being only intermittently a good poet — best in “To Helen.” Through French symbolism Poe influenced Eliot and Pound.]

Hoch, Edward D. “The Problem of the Pink Post Office,” Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, 17 June 1981, pp. 140-155. [Dr. Sam Hawthorne recalls in “The Purloined Letter” clearing up the mystery of missing mail.]

Holding, James. “The Search for Tamerlane,” Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, 20 May 1981, pp. 128-142. [Plots and counterplots to recover a lost copy of Tamerlane and Other Poems structure this comic story.]

Holland, Norman N. and Leona F. Sherman. “Gothic Possibilities,” New Literary History, 8 (1977), 279-294. [Discussing reasons for the continuing popularity of gothicism, the authors [page 28:] mention Poe’s employment of the symbolic haunted castle in “Usher,” most notably in “The Haunted Palace” section, and approve his use of rational explanation of horrors. His poetry seems “flat and stale” in our time.]

Holman, C. Hugh. “The Status of Simms,” American Quarterly, 10 (1958), 181-185. [Poe eclipsed Simms as critic, poet, tale-writer, although Simms’ accomplishments with the last genre are considerable — a fact often forgotten.]

Hubbell, Jay B. “Literary Nationalism in the Old South,” American Studies in Honor of William Kenneth Boyd, ed. David K. Jackson (Durham, N. C.: Duke Univ. Press, 1940), pp. 175-220. [Poe the magazinist was an advocate of the South.]

————————. South and Southwest: Literary Essays and Reminiscences (Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 1965). [In addition to “Edgar Allan Poe and the South,” reprinted and revised from Texas Studies in Literature and Language (1960), there is much information on Poe in the essays and iri the bibliography.]

Inge, M. Thomas. ed. High Times and Hard Times: Sketches and Tales 6y George Washington Harris (Nashville: Vanderbilt Univ. Press, 1967) . [In “Well! Dad’s Dead,” Harris treats his familiar gallery of characters “in a dry, macabre way so as to achieve an Edgar Allan Poe-like effect,” which also suggests the “darker work of Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain, and William Faulkner.”]

Irwin, John. Doubling and Incest / Revenge and Repetition: A Speculative Reading of Faulkner (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1975, 1977). [Poe is mentioned several times in relation to his stories of doubles — “William Wilson” and, less obviously, “Murders“ — the tales about women, and “Usher,” a tale which paves the way to Twain (“An Encounter with an interviewer”) and Faulkner (Ahsalom). Roderick is driven mad by the image of his own fate which he seff in the progressive physical dissolution of his twin sister Madeline . . . .”]

Jackson, David K. “Philip Pendleton Cooke: Virginia Gentleman, Lawyer, Hunter, and Poet,” American Studies in Honor of William Kenneth Boyd’ ed. David K. Jackson (Durham, N. C.: Duke Univ. Press, 1940), pp. 282-326. [The Cooke-Poe relationship is discussed, with pertinent quotations illustrating its significance.]

Jacobs, Robert D. “John Carl Miller (1916-1979),” Poe Studies Association Newsletter, 7 No. 2 (1979), 4. [Jacobs outlines this well-known Poe scholar’s career.]

Joshi, S. T., ed. H. P. Lovecraft: Four Decades of Criticism (Athens: Ohio Univ. Press 1980). [Joshi reprints the opposing views by Thomas Ollive Mabbott and Edmund Wilson and J. Vernon Shea’s examination of influences upon Supernatural Horror in Literature, naming Lovecraft’s affection for Poe’s works as primary.]

Keeling, Thomas H. “Science Fiction and the Gothic,” grudges to Science Fiction, ed. George E. Slusser, George R. Guffey, and Mark Rose (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois Univ. Press; London & Amsterdam: Feffes & Simons, Inc., 1980), pp. 107-119. [Mentioning the influence of gothic fiction upon science fiction, Keeling speaks of Pym as a work placed under each category.]

King, Stephen. Danse Macabre (New York: Everest House, 1981), pp. 72, 332. [“The Tell-Tale Heart” is probably the best tale of “inside evil” written. Poe makes us think his narrator mad, in order that we preserve our own sanity. Not every good writer of short fiction moves felicitously into the novel form as Poe doff in Pym. See similar comment in “The Doll Who Ate His Mother,” Whispers, 3 (October 1978), 63-64.1

Knight, Stephen. Form and Ideology in Crime Fiction (London: Macmillan, Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1980), [Ch. 2 deals with Dupin’s alienated intellectualism, activity in solving mysterious problems, seeming supernaturalism, and embodiment [column 2:] of both art and science. The narrator bridges the gap between Dupin and readers, partaking of qualities in both through his interest in the mysteries and his receptiveness. “Marie Roget” fails in its attempt to “analyze” reality; “The Purloined Letter,” conversely, succeeds because it is a “powerful fable” of a hero whose “intellect, imagination, and self-consciousness” soar above heights attained by mere study.]

Kramer, Dale. Charles Robert Maturin (New York: Twayne, 1973). [Although “Gothicism has delivered its finest fruits in America,” Poe and Hawthorne “were reacting more to private impulses than to socio-political-literary conditions.” Poe questioned Maturin’s method in Melmoth the Wanderer.]

Lang, Andrew. “About Edwin Drood: A Dialogue,” Cambrudge Review, 2 March 1911, pp. 323-325. [This spoof upon Holmes and Watson ( Sheerot and Whatson ) “solving” the Edwin Drood mystery mentions Poe as an excellent reasoner, notably in his commentary on the outcome of Barnaby Rudge.]

———————— , ed. “Introduction” to Charles Dickens, The Uncommercial Traveller (London: Chapman & Hall; New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1898), pp. v-ix. [Discussing the more gruesome pieces in this collection, Lang remarks on Dickens’ affinities with Poe in the legend of Chips in ‘Nurses’ Stories,” a tale of a bargain with the devil.]

Lass, Abraham H., and Norma L. Tasman, eds. 21 Great Stories (New York: New American Library, 1969), pp. 130-145. [A terse survey of Poe’s career plus remarks on his theory of a unified effect introduce ‘The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Tell-Tale Heart.”]

Leary, Lewis. Southern Excursions: Essays on Mark Twain and Others (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1971). [Leery briefly mentions Poe’s impact upon Lanier and Hearn.]

Levin, Harry. “Science and Fiction,” Bridges to Science Fiction, ed. George E. Slusser, George R. Guffey, and Mark Rose (Carbondale and Edwardsville:-Southern Illinois Univ. Press; London and Amsterdam: Feffer & Simons, 1980), pp. 3-21. [‘Mellonta Tauta” exemplifies writing that doff not transcend the technology of its day. The brothers Goncourt are quoted for their thoughts of science fiction after reading Poe, and Poe’s impact upon Verne is noted, as is his attempt to reconcile spirit and matter in Eureka.]

Lewis, Paul. “Fearful Lessons: The Didacticism of the Early Gothic Novel,” College Language Association Journal, 23 (1980), 470-484. [A “concentration on failing values and thematic irresolution is inspiring readings of later works in the Gothic tradition, like . . . Edgar Allan Poe’s short fiction. . . ,” but such a critical view can be unfairly turned against earlier works.]

Livey, Virginia. “The World of Objects in Richard Wilbur’s Poetry,” Papers of the Arkansas Philological Association, 7 (1981), 41-51. [Opposing romantic poets like Poe, Wilbur finds his ideal or center for perfection within a tangible world.]

Ljungquist, Kent. Review of Gary W. Crawford, ea., Gothic, Poe Studies Association Newsletter, 7 No. 2 (Fall 1979), 3. [Ljungquist comments on the relevance of this journal and particularly the first issue for Poe studies.]

————————. Review of Bernhardt J. Hurwood. My Savage Muse: The Story of My Life. Elgar Allan Poe — An Imaginative Work, Poe Studies Association Newsletter, 8 No. 2 (Fall 1980), 2. [This negative review highlights Hurwood’s use of Bonaparte and “Grand Guignol style and effects — all reminiscent of Mr. Blackwood Blackwood.”]

————————. Review of N. L. Zaroulis, The Poe Papers; Marc Olden, Poe Must Die; and Manny Myers, The Last Mystery of Edgar Allan Poe, Poe Studies Association Newsletter, 7 No. 2 (Fall 1979), 2. [These writers play fast and loose with Poe’s biography, although Zaroulis does lean toward greatest accuracy as she creates excellent atmosphere and “dramatic irony.”] [page 29:]

Lynn, Kenneth S., ed. The Comic Tradition in America: An Anthology of American Humor (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1959). [Poe’s humor is rooted in despair. “Diddling” and “How to Write a Blackwood Article” represent his comic tendencies. In the introduction to selections from G. W. Harris, Lynn offers brief but suggestive remarks concerning links between the Lovingood yarns and Poe’s humor.]

McElrath, Joseph R., Jr. “The Artistry of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman’s ‘The Revolt,‘” Studies in Short Fiction, 17 (1980), 255-266. [Freeman’s famous story was magazine fiction, first appearing in Harper’s Monthly (1890), and had to employ situations of immediate interest to the periodical reader, often a browser, such as “kick” or “twist” endings and catchy beginnings. Just so with Poe, who earlier “cannily understood the situation” of magazine appeal, luring readers with sensational openings in tales like “The Pit and the Pendulum” and “The Tell-Tale Heart.”]

McWhiny, Grady. Southerners and Other Americans (New York: Basic Books, 1973). [Poe, with Simms, J. P. Kennedy, A. B. Longstreet, and G. W. Harris are the paramount writers of the Old South. Poe’s work transcends regionalism.]

Marks, Barry A. E. E. Cummings (New York: Twayne, 1964), pp. 109ff. [Poe’s aesthetic doctrine that poetry approaches the condition of music lies in Cummings’s background.]

Marshall, Gene, and Carl F. Wacdt, “An Index to the Health Knowledge Magazines,” Science-Fiction Collector, 3 ( February 1977), 3-48. [This index contains considerable bibliographical information about reprints of Poe’s tales in such publications as Weirl Tales and the Magazine of Horror, periodicals contributing to the image of Poe as a sensational writer.]

Mayoux, Jean-Jaques. “De Quincey: Humor and the Drugs,” Veins of Humor [Harvard English Studies, 3], ed. Harry Levin (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1972), pp. 109130. [Although he mentions cursorily De Quinceyan techniques that are akin to Poe’s, Mayoux seems unaware of studies that deal at length with Poe’s ironic propensities.]

Mellow, James R. Nathaniel Hawthorne in His Times ( Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1980) . [Mellow charts Poe’s shifting attitudes toward Hawthorne in his reviews of Twice-Toll Tales and Mosses, his attempts to secure writing from Hawthorne in magazine ventures, and Hawthorne’s customary wariness toward Poe. Poe’s knowledge of the periodical market of his era was matchless.]

Painter, F. V. N. Poets of the South (Freeport, New York: Books for Libraries, 1968; rpt. of 1903 ed.). [Chapter II treats Poe’s non-moral life and his predilection for the dismal and horrible. Like the tales, the poems reveal Poe’s striving a*er “imPression.” “The Raven” is his best.]

Percy, Walker. Lancelot (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1977; rpt. New York: Avon Books, 1978). [Toward the end of ch. 4, the hero’s friend Elgin describes how he will observe Lancelot’s wife and her illicit lover. Lancelot is reminded of “The Purloined Letter,‘’ and of how Poe resembles his friend: “Find happiness in problems and puzzles and mathematical gold bugs. But he (Poe) let go of it. Went nutty like me. Elgin wouldn‘t.”]

Piper, Henry Dan. Review of C. Hugh Holman, Windows of the World: Essays on American Social Fiction, English Language Notes, 18 (1980), 152-153. [Piper thinks that Holman should say more about the impact of gothic romance upon first-person narrative in American fiction, citing the importance of gothic backgrounds for Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville, as well as for subsequent detective stories.]

Pirie, David. The Vampire Cinema (London: Quarto Publishers; New York: Crescent Books, 1977). [Roger Corman resisted British attempts to dominate the horror film during the 1950’s and 1960’s. “Corman built Poe’s world into a native American Gothic subject with its own marketability,” and he succeeded [column 2:] because of the “continuing popularity of . . . Poe as a horror writer.”]

Poe, Edgar Allan, and Richard L. Tierney. “The Light-House,” Nycatlops, 14 (March 1978), 14-16. [Tierney continues Poe’s final, incomplete tale, in which the narrator faces a giant sea monster, perhaps the product of a psyche distorted by loneliness, just before the building crumbles.]

Pothier, Dick. “Edgar Allan Poe: Remembering His Philadelphia Days,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 10 April 1980, p. 3. [This sketch of Poe’s years in Philadelphia promotes visits to the Poe House at North Seventh and Spring Garden Sts.]

Pugh, Griffith Thompson. George Washington Cable: A Biographical and Critical Study (Nashville: Joint University Libraries, 1947). [Pugh notes Cable’s youthful reading of Poe, as well as the similarity of “Belles Demoiselles Plantation” to “Usher,” citing Edmund Gosse’s review in the London Saturday Review, 20 August 1881, p. 238, as authoritative on the subject. Gosse’s review has been reprinted by Arlin Turner, ea., Critical Essays on George W. Cable (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1980), pp. 28-31.]

Punter, David. The Literature of Terror: A History of Gothic Fiction from 1765 to the Present Day (London & New York: Longman, 1980) . [Comments throughout on Poe, some discriminating, some not, covering topics such as his knowledge of German, his “European” qualities, and his irony, sources, and influence.]

Radin, Edward D. ‘‘The Mystery of Mary Rogers: Detective — Edgar Allan Poe,” Ellery Queen’s 1965 Anthology, 8 (1954), 310-313. [The circumstances in the disappearance and death of Mary Rogers are outlined, then Poe’s version — in which a mysterious sailor is designated the murderer. Given the information Radin sets forth, readers are invited to solve this mystery.]

Reid, John T. “As the Other Americans See Our Literature,” South Atlantic Quarterly, 40 (1941), 211-219. [Poe is the best known U.S. writer in Latin America, appreciated primarily for his melancholy and the sense he conveys of the isolation of the artist. “The Raven‘’ is his most popular poem there.]

Rickels, Milton. Thomas Bangs Thorpe: Humorist of the Old Southwest (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1962). [According to Rickels, Poe reviewed W. T. Porter’s The Big Bear of Arkansas and Other Sketches, singling out for special deprecation Thorpe’s title sketch and one more. Rickels adds that “Poe was not at his best when analyzing humor or the Western frontier character.” The review, in Broadway Journal, 24 May 1845, p. 331, is unsigned.]

Roberts, Bette B. “Romantic Gothicism,” Gothic, 1 (1980), 6869. “Roberts comments about G. R. Thompson’s theories of gothicism in Romantic Gothic Tales.]

Rosenbach, A. S. W. “The Trail of Scarlet,” Saturday Evening Post, l October 1932, pp. 8-9, 32, 34, 36. [Rosenbach recounts his collecting mystery and detective fiction.]

Rubin, Louis D., Jr. George W. Cable: The Life and Times of a Southern Heretic (New York: Pegasus, 1969). [Rubin ranks Cable just behind Poe as a southern literary figure and mentions Cable’s recollections of recitations from verse, including Poe’s, during his war years.]

———————— , and C. Hugh Holman, eds. Southern Literary Study: Problems and Possibilities (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1975). [Poe’s place in southern studies is discussed. His humor requires additional study.]

Selz, Peter, “Painting and Sculpture, Prints and Drawings,” An Nouveau: Art and Design at the Turn of the Century, ed. Peter Selz and Mildred Constatine, rev. ed. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1975), pp. 46-85. [Selz mentions Jan Toorop’s early 1890 illustrations for Poe’s writings.] [page 30:]

Smith, Nelson C. lames Hogg (Boston: Twayne, 1980). [Intermittent remarks concerning affinities between Poe and Hogg’s exploration of the eeriness in abnormal psychology and his use of narrative techniques. Poe may have known Hogg’s work through Blackwood’s, especially its installments of Noctes Ambrosianae.]

Smith, Valerie. Review of Les Daniels’ Living in Fear: A History of Horror in the Mass Media’ The Sphinx, 8 (1977), 70-72. [Although Daniel argues against Marie Bonaparte’s psychoanalytic interpretation of Poe’s tales, he himself links them to Poe’s personal attitudes.]

Spiller, Robert E. The Oblique Light: Studies in Literary History and Biography (New York: Macmillan, London: Collier-Macmillan, 1968). [Spiller comments frequently on Poe’s reputation, the conditions withholding recognition from him and others, such as Whitman, during the genteel era, and Poe’s place as an aesthetician in American culture.]

Spisak, James W. “Narration as Seduction, Seduaion as Narration,” CEA Critic, 41 (1979), 26-29. [Many readers miss the twin thrust of Montresor’s tale: “Besides apparently luring Fortunato to his doom, Montresor also draws the reader to partake in the pleasure he relives in telling the tale of his successful seduction.”]

Spivey, Ted R. The Journey Beyond Tragedy: A Study of Myth and Modern Fiction (Orlando: Univ. Presses of Florida, 1980). [Poe’s creation of “Al Aaraaf” as a place for the self-realization of the soul, his probing dark forces in a manner like Hardy’s later explorations, and his impact upon the Symbolists, O‘Connor, Joyce, Mann, and T. S. Eliot are mentioned.]

Stein, Roger B. Seascape and the American Imagination (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1975). [Painting and song often associate sailor’s lives with drunkenness, as in the “sea-as-intemperance motif” in the opening of Pym, when the “youthful pranksters are almost drowned by embarking on a drunken spree on board the little boat of the imagination, Ariel.”]

Steinbrunner, Chris. “Bloody Visions,” Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, 12 August 1981, pp. 108-109. [Sketching Barbara Stanwyck’s career in mystery films, Steinbrunner comments particularly about Poe in a film adaptation of John Dickson Carr’s story “The Man in the Cloak.”]

Stevenson, Lionel. “The Anthologist’s Dilemma,” South Atlantic Quarterly, 59 (1960), 82-87. [A significant number of Poe’s poems appear in George Moore’s Anthology of Pure Poetry (1925) .]

Stewart, Randall. Nathaniel Hawthorne: A Biography (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1948; rpt. 1961). [This terse discussion of Poe’s changing attitudes toward Hawthorne’s tales notes that he, as well as Melville, admired the earlier works in Mosses, as do modern critics. Stewart corrects Poe’s notion that Hawthorne was a Concord Transcendentalist and supplements Poe’s commentary on Hawthorne’s allegories.]

Stewart, R. F. . . . And Always a Detective: Chapters on the History of Detective Fiction (London and North Pomfret, Vt.: David & Charles, 1980). [Poe, father of detective fiction, was not conscious of what he invented. He and Wilkie Collins were long neglected, although both anticipated methods of later writers in this vein.]

Thorp, Willard. “Arlin Turner, 1909-1980,” South Atlantic Quarterly, 80 (1981), 1-5. [Had Turner not completed his biography of Hawthorne, he would still be remembered for distinguished studies of American Literature, among them several significant items concerning Poe.]

Trachtenberg, Stanley. “Reviews,” Studies in American Fiction, 2 (1974), 119-122. [There are shakey spots in The Comic Imagination in American Literature, ed. Louis D. Rubin, Jr. One such is Hennig Cohen’s treatment of Poe, Hawthorne, [column 2:] and Melville: “Cohen is able to tell little about the comic either as a unique mode imposing certain esthetic demands on its material, or as a subordinate one, integrated into the dominant view of the writers he discusses.”]

Turner, Arlin. George W. Cable: A Biography (Durham, N. C.: Duke Univ. Press, 1956). [Cable knew more about Poe’s poetry than his prose although he remarked late in life that he had read the tales. Turner Cites praise of Cable as the greatest southern writer after Poe.]

Van Doren, Mark. Nathaniel Hawthorne: A Critical Biography (New York: William Sloane 1949; Toronto: Macmillan of Canada Ltd., 1949; rpt. New York: Compass Books, 1957). [Van Doren compares Poe with Hawthorne, chides Poe’s coolness toward Hawthorne’s allegorical tendencies — commenting in wonder at Poe’s preference for “Little Annie’s Ramble” over “Young Goodman Brown.” Van Doren’s own view of Poe’s vision — that he “made his own weird world out of nothing at all‘‘ — has been pretty much dismissed.]

Veeder, William. ” ‘Carmilla’: The Arts of Repression,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 22 (1980), 197-223. [The narrator of Le Fanu’s famous tale, Laura, resembles Poe’s narrators because she relives the past and tries “to understand it and herself.” She is Iffs “desperate,” but just as obsessive, as narrators in “Cask,” “Lygeia” [sic], and “The Oblong Box.”]

W., J. H. [J. H. Whitty?]. “Brevity the Soul of Poetry,” Nation, 9 October 1884, p. 311. [Poe’s notion was not original; an antecedent appears in Nonius Marcellus’ dictionary ( p. 428ff.), where Lucilius is cited as a source.]

Watkins, T. H. “The Purloined Past,” American Heritage, 129 (1978), 49-49; rpt. Manuscripts, 30 (1978), 260-262. [Noting recent increases in manuscript and rare books thefts, Watkins mentions the disappearance of an 1848 daguerreotype of Poe — reproduced in the article, from the University of Virginia’s Alderman Library — and comments that Poe, the “great ancfftor of mystery and detective fiction,” might have enjoyed the irony of its loss.]

Weber, Carl J. Harly of Wessex: His Life anl Literary Career, 2nd. ed. (New York: Columbia Univ. Press; London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965). [Hardy, who quotes “The Raven” in Jude the Obscure, had an abiding interest in the aims and techniques in Poe’s verse — particularly in “Ulalume.”]

Weir, Robert F. ed. Death in Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), pp. 3, 21, 317-318, 322. [The selections are “The Emperor [sic] Worm,” and “Annabel Lee,” with commonplace and obvious editorial remarks.]

Williams, Valentine. “Detective Fiction,” The Bookman [NY], 67 (1928), 521-524. [Vidocq precedes Poe in the development of detective fiction. Poe creates the first amateur detective, Dupin, “the ancestor of Monsieur Lecoq, of Sherlock Holmes, of Martin Hewlitt, of Sexton Blake and a score, nay, a hundred, others.” Williams also comments upon the French craze for Poe, spurred by Baudelaire’s translation of Tales of Mystery and Imagination ( 1856).]

Yates, Norris W. William T. Porter and the “Spirit of the Times”: A Study of the Big Bear School of Humor (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1957). [Poe favored England during the 1830’s and 40’s, a time of general American anglophobia. Yates also notes Poe’s interest in tall-tale humor.]

Young, Philip. Ernest Hemingway: A Reconsideration, rev. ed. (University Park: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1966; rpt. New York: Harcourt Brace and World, 1966). [Along with such others as Hawthorne and Melville, Poe was an American writer whose imagination envisioned misery and gloom rather than happiness and optimism.]


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[S:0 - PSDR, 1980]