Gender and the Poetics of Reception in Poe's Circle

Edgar Allan Poe is frequently portrayed as an isolated idiosyncratic genius unwilling or unable to adapt himself to the cultural conditions of his time. Eliza Richards revises this portrayal through an exploration of his collaborations and rivalries with his female contemporaries. Richards interprets and re-evaluates the work of three important and largely forgotten women poets in the context of nineteenth-century lyric practices: Frances Sargent Osgood, Sarah Helen Whitman, and Elizabeth Oakes Smith.