JANUARY 19

EDGAR ALLAN POE

I

Edgar Allan Poe, whom the Encyclopaedia Britannica calls the most interesting figure in American literature, and who is in France the best known of American writers3, was born Jan. 19, 1809, in Boston, the son of two play actors not very successful or prosperous. At three years old he had lost both parents and was adopted by a wealthy merchant of Richmond, Va. In his hoyhood he had every indulgence. From 8 to 13 he attended a private school in London, the same in which Eugene Aram was usher. When the family returned to Richmond he attended the classical school there, until at 17 he entered the university of Virginia. Here he was so fond of gambling that by the end of the year he was $2,500 in debt. His adopted father took

him out of college and put him into the counting-room. He ran away to Boston, and at 18 he found a publisher for his first book, "Tamerlane and other Poems". The book made little impression, and he enlisted as United States soldier, serving two years, until he was discharged to enter West Point. He neglected and despised his military duties, and was dismissed from the service within a year.

II

He settled in Baltimore and began to write prose tales. At 24, when he was almost starving, he took a $100 prize for a story. This called attention to him, and he became a-writer for literary journals. When he was 26 years old his adopted father died without mentioning him his will. He moved to Richmond, and became an assistant editor, but soon lost the place, probably through intemperance, and went to New York, where his mother-in-law partially supported him by keeping boarders. In 1838 he moved to Philadelphia3, struggled along for five years in ill-paid literary work, but lost his place again, and in 1844 moved to New York, and continued to wrestle with poverty.

As a Journalist

III

11

In 1835, when he was 36 years old, his poem "The Raven" appeared, and at once gave him entirely new standing among literary men. But though it brought him distinction, it left him still dependent upon irregular literary work. In 1846 he moved to Fordham, into a cottage still standing at the top of Fordham Hill on Kingsbridge road, where he devoted himself mainly to "Eureka", a prose poem in which, he expected to revolutionize physical and metaphysical science. He died in a hospital in Baltimore on Oct. 7, 1849,

IV

His life work was as a journalist. In 1833 he became a contributor to the Baltimore Saturday Visiter, and in 1835 he began work on the Southern Literary Messenger, of Richmond... In 1840 he became associate editor of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine and the next year editor of Graham's Magazine. This position he gave up in 1842, and in 1844 he became a hack writer on the New York Evening Mirror. In Feb., 1845, he became associate editor of the Broadway Journal, and afterwards editor and proprietor, purchasing his partner's interest with a note for $50 endorsed by Horace Greeley.

He struggled heroically to maintain it, but it died at the close of the year. In 1846 he published in Godey's Lady's Book six numbers of "Literati", papers of caustic contemporary criticism.

V

He was at first successful as an editor. He raised the circulation. of the Southern Literary Messenger from 200 to 5,000, and of Graham's Magazine during the fifteen months that he had charge of it from 8,000 to 40,000. In all his editorial work he published his stories; but the

most marked feature was his criti

cism of. contem

porary writers,

which was bold and

getere, terribly in

earnest, especially

impatient of artis

tic imperfection.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW,

1807-1882

Naturally it raised

Especially viru

lent were his repeated charges of plagiarism

against Longfellow, to which the gentle poet made only this reply:

The harshness of his criticism I have never attributed to anything but the irritation of a sensitive nature chafed by some indefinite sense of wrong.

VI

His critical power was on the whole sound.

He was the first in

this country to rec

ognize the genius

of Mrs. Browning,

saying she had sur

passed her contem

poraries of either

ALFRED TENNYSON, 1809-1861

sex except Tennyson; to whom as to Dickens, Longfellow, and Hawthorne he brought early applause1; and while he was mistaken in his estimate of Carlyle and Emerson, his judgment has in most other cases been confirmed by posterity. He was the first to mark