Text: Benjamin Franklin Fisher IV, “Fugitive Poe References and Poe Reviews: A Bibliography,” Poe Studies, June 1982, Vol. XV, No. 1, 15:p-p


∞∞∞∞∞∞∞


[page 18, column 2:]

Fugitive Poe References and Poe Reviews:
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 that 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. Reviews of significant scholarly and critical studies dealing directly or indirectly with Poe are gathered for convenience at the end of this listing. For aid in compiling items cited here, I am grateful to Louis J. Budd, Anne I. and Jack H. Barton and family, Kent Ljungquist, Jean C. Pflum, and Alexander G. Rose III.

Anon. “Among the Newest Books,’ Book Buyer, 14(1897), 176. “William L. Morrow has produced “a baker’s dozen of tales of the grotesque and horrible, entitled The Ape, The Idiot, and Other People. They are the contributions . . . to that literature of the ghastly of which Poe still remains the great apostle.”]

Anon. “Belles Lettres,” Westminster Reuiew, 139(1893), 699. t“Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery, in spite of their grotesque horrors, will always be read.” They reveal fine style and great imagination. “Ligeia is certainly, in its way, one of the finest short stories ever written.”]

Anon. “The Contributors’ Club,” Atlantic Monthly 81(1898), 573-574. [Although Poe says much about analytic powers in the opening of “Murders,” most subsequent writers of detective fiction employ little art in the solvings of their mysteries. Dupin is the “prototype of Sherlock Holmes.”]

Anon. “Current Literature,’ Spectator, 26 May 1894, p. 728. Shiel’s “Zaleski appears to be a composite of Dupin and Sherlock Holmes, and to have been a cousin of Prince Florizel of Bohemia, the royal tobacconist.’ ]

Anon. “Current Literature.” Athenaeum, 2 September 1893, p. 317. [The title story in E. Nisbet’s Something’s Wrong (1893) ‘is in the manner of Edgar Poe, whose influence seems, with or without the author’s consciousness, to have affected the whole book. But there is much that has come into fashion since Poe’s times. He could not have written anything so bitterly cynical as ‘The Blue Rose.‘”]

Anon. Current Literature,” Spectator, 26 May 1894, p. 728. [Julian Hawthorne s story “Judith Armytage” recalls Poe’s tales and is “a weird affair.”]

Anon. “A Gruesome Tale,” Book News, 13(1894), 17. [Discussing R. L. Stevenson’s The Ebl’ Tide, the writer notes George Moore’s ranking of Stevenson lower than Poeu a personal opinion, the writer thinks. The Ebb Tide is to the work by Stevenson as Pym is to Poe’s “finest creations,” although “it is not . . . an experiment in pure fantasy, like the grotesque, unfinished tale of Pym’s exploration. . . .”] [page 19:]

Anon. “Happy Birthday, Ben and Edgar!” The Bulletin [Philadelphia, Pa.] 15 January 1982, p. D-1. [An ample survey of events celebrating the birthdays of Benjamin Franklin and Poe, respectively January 17 and 19, with attention to a two-day party planned by the National Park Service at the Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site, 7th and Spring Garden Sts.]

Anon. “Jules Verne Again,” Public Opinion, 22 December 1898, p. 793. [The reviewer jibes at Verne’s leaving readers in ignorance about the white figure looming at the close of Pym during a reading of his own An Anarctic Mystery (Lippincott, 1898) .]

Anon. “The King in Yellow,” Book News, 13(1895), 407. [R. W. Chambers’ title story from The King in Yellow evinces “ravings of madmen, echoes of Poe, and the French diabolists.”]

Anon. “Miscellany,” Literary World, 3 September 1898, p. 286. [Discussion of the MS. for “Murders,” owned once by George W. Childs, of Philadelphia, now bequeathed to the Drexel Institute of Technology and being turned into a published facsimile. This MS. is interesting because it reveals “few erasures and only occasional interlineations.”]

Anon. “Notes,” Book News, 12(1894), 436. [Noting the preparation of an edition of Henry B. Hirst’s verse, by Dr. Matthew Woods of Philadelphia, the commentator remarks the companionship of Hirst with Poe. Hirst “possessed many of (Poe’s) characteristics.”]

Anon. “Notes on Holiday Books,” Nation, 9 December 1909, pp. 569-571. [Mentioning the issues of Poe’s tales by Lippincott’s and Putnam’s, the reviewer remarks of graphics: “Poe is not an easy author to illustrate; it is a pity the morbid imagination of Aubrey Beardsley was never directed that way“ — and forgets that Beardsley had illustrated the 1893 Stone & Kimball edition of Poe.]

Anon. “Reviews,” Book News, 17(1898), 37. [In the King in Yellow R. W. Chambers imirates the “weird imagination” of Poe in several stories.]

Anon. “Short Stories,” Athenaesurn, 23 March 1895, pp. 375-376. [In Prince Zaleski, M. P. Shiel attempted to combine Poe’s “mysterious terror” with Doyle’s “sensational amazement” from the Holmes tales.]

Anon. “The Truer and Higher Realism,” Public Opinion, 20 June 1895, pp. 705-706. [Cites the Dallas News to argue that writers, by “sheer force of subtle reasoning,” can create “realism“ — and cites “Hans Pfaall” as evidence.]

Anon. [“L.”]. “James Whitcomb Riley,” Book News, 13(1894), 97-98. [Concerns Riley’s “Leonainie” forgery from Poe. J. O. Henderson, editor of the Kokomo (Indiana) Dispatch, where Riley’s verse first appeared, knew the details of the hoax.]

Anon. [“N.”]. “The King in Yellow,” The Sketch, 11 (2 October 1896), p. 554. [R. W. Chambers’ sensationalism reveals his kinship with Poe. Hawthorne, to whom Chambers also owes debts, would be a better model.]

Anon. [“O.O.”]. “The Literary Lounger,” The Sketch, 10 (1 May 1895), 4. [M. P. Shiel’s Prince Zaleski does not remind this reviewer of Poe’s work or of other writers’ productions with which it has been compared. The Prince “is not a Poe hero at all. Poe was often very boring — Mr. Shiel is not, so far — but when Poe interests he also impresses.’]

Bennett, Arnold. “The Twelve Finest Novels,” Evening Standard, 10 March 1927, p. 5; rpt., as “Russian Fiction,” in The Savour of Life (New York: Doubleday, 1928), pp. 127-135; rpt. in The Author’s Craft and other Critical Writings of Arnold Bennett. (Lincoln, Neb.: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1968), pp. 248-253. [Hawthorne is over-rated for his inferior prose, and simultaneously America too charily appreciates the work of Poe and Whitman — an opinion altered since Bennett originally wrote.]

Brewster, Dorothy, and John Angus Burrell. Modern World Fiction (Paterson, N.J.: Littlefield, Adams & Co., 1951, 1953, 1960). [Poe lived in America, but his writing does not reflect American scenes. Balzac, like Poe, fashioned his own world in fiction.] [column 2:]

Chamberlin, J. E. “From High Decadence to High Modernism,” Queen’s Quarterly, 87(1980), 591-610. [The French writers who were central ro the Symbolist movement found an idol in the Poe who thought that poetry should concern itself solely with beauty, a beauty tinged with sorrow or melancholy: “the human thirst of self-torture.”]

Christopher, Nicholas. “Walt Whitman at the Reburial of Poe,” New Yorker, 25 August 1980, p. 93. [This is a Whitmanesque bit of verse that takes the form of Whitman’s meditation as he attends burial ceremonies in 1875. Poe is Whitman’s antithesis.]

Cooper-Clark, Diana. “An Interview with Peter Lovesey,” Armchair Detective, 14(1981), 210-217. [Nineteenth-century writers grow disillusioned with reason, as is demonstrated by detective fiction by Poe and Dickens (Bleak House).]

Davis, Rebecca Harding. “Some Hobgoblins in Literature,” Book Buyer, 14(1897), 229-231. [Poe is “the chief hobgoblin in American Literature” because Griswold depicted him as a “moral monster.” Others testify to his affectionate nature. C. J. Peterson in particular defends Poe.]

Day, Bradford M., ed. The Checklist of Fantastic Literature in Paperbound Books (New York: Arno Press, 1975). [Predictably, the Poe section is erratic, although it contains interesting information on rewrites of Poe’s tales and of Pym. The Supplemental Checklist, also dated 1975, lists the Poe-Verne The Mystery of Arthur Gordon Pym.]

Derleth, August. “Foreword,” Green Tea and Other Ghost Stories by J. Sheridan Le Fanu (Sauk City, Wis.: Arkham House, 1945), pp. vii-x. [Poe probably never read any of Le Fanu’s fiction. Poe, Hawthorne, Bierce notwithstanding, there has never been a rage for supernatural fiction in the U.S.A., and Le Fanu’s tales are probably unfamiliar to many readers here.]

Dickason, David Howard. William Williams: Novelist and Painter of Colonial America (Bloomington and London: Indiana Univ. Press, 1970). [Argues that Mr. Penrose bears similarities in ratiocination, and in use of a cypher and search for pirate treasure, to “The Gold-Bug.”]

Erisman, Fred. “Crime Fiction: Some Varieties of Historical Experience,” Clues, 1 (1980), 1-8. [The “gifted amateur” who comprehends mysteries baffling to professional lawmen originates in Dupin and Holmes.]

Fisher, Benjamin Franklin IV. “The Residual Gothic Impulse: 1824-1873,” in Horror Literature: A Core Collection and a Reference Guide, ed. Marshall B. Tymn (New York: R. R. Bowker, 1981), pp. 176-220. [Poe receives greatest attention as a master in the horrific vein in this section of Horror Literature, in which his name appears often. His adaptations of Blackwood’s themes and forms, his reviving the moribund gothic tradition, and his position as a creator of psychological tales are assessed.]

————————. “Wilkie Collins and the Critics,” Wilkie Collins Society Journal, 1(1981), 5-12. [Comments upon the Poesque in Collins’ fiction, with special attention to the study by R. V. Andrew.]

Gardner, Joseph H. “Beardsley and the Post-Romantic Venus,” Denver Quarterly, 13(1979), 3-14. [The penultimate chapter of Under the Hill features a lake. This might resemble “Poe’s ‘pit,’ a depth so loathsome that it cannot be seen without risking destruction. . . .”]

Godfrey, Lydia. “Old Sleuth, Nineteenth Century ‘Nipper’: America’s First Serialized Detective and His World,” Clues, 1(1980), 53-56. [In popular imagination, “the mysteries of Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle paled into insignificance” in comparison with those by Harlan Page Halsey.]

Goldhurst, William. “The Betrayal of Edgar Allan Poe: A Ringing Defense not a Moment Too Soon!” Village Voice, 2-8 September 1981, pp. 1, 33-34. [Goldhurst attempts an evaluation of the truths and half-truths about Poe that continue to concern biographers and critics. Indicating the speculative nature of the Bonaparte-Krutch-Allen reactions to the Griswold distortions of Poe’s personality, Goldhurst reminds us of the greater reliability of A. H. Quinn’s biography, of Wagenknecht’s study, of Buranelli’s Twayne book, and of the Mabbott-Harvard [page 20:] Harvard Edition of the poems and the tales and sketches. Along the way, Goldhurst comments perceptively upon other, continuing facets of the Poe legend: the sex pervert, drug addict (somebody presently owns Poe’s opium pipe!), and the alcoholic.]

Gribben, Lenore S. Who’s Whodunnit [University of North Carolina Library Studies No. 5] (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina, 1969). [Gribben sets as her beginning date 1845, the year of publication for Poe’s Tales, the detective tales therein being milestones among the origins of her subject. Her work offers bibliographical listings of volumes of detective stories through 1961.]

Hartwell, David G. “Preface,” in George Tucker, A Voyage to the Moon (Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1975), pp. vii-ix. [Poe comments negatively upon this book, first published in 1827, in his note to “Hans Phaall.”]

Hubin, Allen J. “AJH Reviews,” Armchair Detective, 14(1981), 218-221. [Andrew Sinclair’s The Facts in the Case of E. A. Poe is more biography than novel. It is “cute,” but not significant.]

Jacobs, Fred. “Soup to Nuts: A Poe-Puree of Puns,” Word Ways: Journal of Recreational Linguistics, 13(1980), 38, 62. [Considering Poe’s punster practices, Abrams prepared twenty-five of his own puns based upon “Cask.” Solutions are given.]

Jacobs, Joseph. “Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson,” Athenaeum, 22 December 1894, pp. 863-864. [Some claim Meredith, some Poe as literary ancestors of Stevenson. Stevenson, though, “could not equal Poe’s command of the eerie and fantastic. . . . ]

Jones, Howard Mumford. “Foreword,” in A Sicilian Romance by Ann Radcliffe. ([1790]; New York: Arno Press, 1972), pp. i-v. [An inheritance from Radcliffe’s works is evident in the verse of the Romantics and Victorians in Britain, as well as in Poe’s works.]

Landon, Brooks. ” ‘Not Solve It but Be in It’: Gertrude Stein’s Detective Stories and the Mystery of Creativiq,” American Literature, 53(1981), 487-498. [Sees links between Poe, particularly the Poe of “Marie Roget,” and Stein’s work in detection.]

Lang, Andrew. “The Sorrows of Short-Story Writers,” Illustrated London News, 27 August 1895, p. 520. [Poe’s excellence in handling stories of missing treasure, revivified corpses or near corpses, and detective proceedings is praised. The rage to turn out brief, startling tales during the 1890’s owes much to Poe — “the grandfather to all who write startling tales.”]

Longaker, Mark. ed. The Poems of Ernest Dowson (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1962), p. 251. [Longaker’s note to “In Prose” sees Dowson’s acquaintance with “Eleonora,” “Ligeia,” and “Usher‘’ as influential upon this poet’s perception of closeness between verse and prose in matters of “poetry.”]

Lynn, Elwin. “Aubrey Beardsley: Beautiful and Beastly,” Quadrant 23 (August 1979), 46-49. [Lynn questions Kenneth Clark’s notion of “best” in choosing from Beardsley’s works, mentioning the omission of the Poe illustrations as especially notable.]

Moskowitz, Sam. ed. Masterpieces of Science Fiction (wfftport Conn.: Hyperion Press, 1974), pp. 1-2G. [Like Mary Shelley in Frankenstein, Poe often located horrors not in gothic atmosphere but in scientific regions. “Hans Phaall” is his classic science-fiction tale.]

Osborne, Duffield. “Conan Doyle,” Book Buyer, 11(1894), 421422. [Most English and American detective stories — “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Purloined Letter” excepted — are absurd. Dupin and Holmes are similar. “Even to follow in Poe’s lines without either imitating or falling short, is a task possible only for the highest talent.”] [column 2:]

Ostrom, John Ward. “Poe’s Love for His Wife in Poverty and Death,” Sun Magazine, 23 March 1980, pp. 14, 16. [Despite rumors to the contrary, Poe loved Virginia and remained faithful to her, manifesting interest in other ladies only after her death. He was apparently a man who needed feminine support and affection.]

Owings, Mark, and Irving Binkin. A Catalogue of Lovecraftiana: The Grill/Binkin Collection (Baltimore: Mirage Press, 1975), n.p. [Lovecraft vies with Poe among American writers of weird fiction. Lovecrafr’s later, long stories especially betray Poe s impact.]

Parish, James Robert, and Steven Whitney. Vincent Price Unmasked: A Biography (New York: Drake Publishers, Inc., 1974). [Ch. 6 treats the conception of the Corman-Price Poe films. The distributors “saw a chance to produce a series of exploitative gothic horror films based on the works of a very prestigious American author. . . .” The photography and atmosphere encompass the Poe spirit. A list of the Poe films is placed toward the end of the book.]

Pearsall, Ronald. Conan Doyle: A Biographical Solution (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977). [Valuable information as regards Doyle’s acknowledgment of his debt to Poe in the Holmes stories. Like Poe, Doyle deftly handles supernaturalism. The Sign of Four, with its pygmy murderer who is extremely agile, recalls the ape in “Murders.”]

Porter, R. E. “Crime Beat,” Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, 78, No. 6 (December 1981), pp. 99-100. [Wonders if Cecelia — heroine of Eleanor Sleath’s Who’s the Murderer? or, The Mystery of the Forest (Minerva Press, 1802) — might antedate Poe’s Dupin as a “solver” of mysteries.]

Reginald, R. Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature: A Checklist, 1700-1974 (Detroit: Gale Research Co., 1979). [The Poe section is considerable, well-nigh a check-list of Poe anthologies in English.]

Reynolds, Aidan, and William Charlton. Arthur Machen: A Short Account of His Life and Work (London: Richards Press, 1963), pp. 42-46. [References to Machen’s admiration for Poe’s writing and to Poesque features in The Great God Pan.]

Seavey, Ormond, “Introduction,” in Richard Adams Locke, The Moon Hoax (Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1975), pp. vii-xxxvi. [Locke’s novel, published in 1835, frustrated Poe’s bid for originality in “Hans Phaall.” Later, Eureka owed a debt to Locke s lecture, “Magnetism and Astronomy,” given in 1842.]

Sherard, Robert H. “Ernest Dowson,” Book Lover, 1 (1900), 86-88. [Essentially a reprint of an article from the Author (May 1900), this provides comment significant for its maintenance of the Poe legend and for typing Poe as poet: Dowson’s death was “gentle, in contrast to “the muddy gutter where, prone on his face in alcoholic apoplexy, Edgar Allan Poe breathed away in shameful hic-coughs his Iyric soul.”]

Stegner, Wallace, ed. Selected American Prose, 1841-1900: The Realistic Movement (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1958). [In his introduction Stegner illustrates by means of “A Descent” the method of offering “vivid . . . persuasive” details with no intention of disguising the “make-believe” aspects of fiction.]

Stuart, Jesse. “Introduction,” in A Jesse Stuart Harvest (New York: Dell, 1965), pp. 7-27. [Among short stories read in childhood that impressed Stuart were those by Poe.]

Sweetster, Wesley D. Arthur Machen (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1964). [Contains information throughout about Poe’s influence upon Machen, for whom he bridged the gap between Coleridge and Pater and represented both the gothic tradition and adumbrated aestheticism.] [page 21:]

Varnado, S. L. “Detectiverse The History of Mystery,” Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, 78(November 1981), p. 103. [Poe is bracketed with Doyle and Chesterton.]

Williams, Edgar. “The Tale of a Writer Evermore,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 20 October 1981, pp. B1-2. [Discussion of a celebration at the Poe House in Philadelphia, honoring the 148th anniversary of “MS. Found in a Bottle.”]

Williams, Talcott. “With the New Books,” Book News, 13(1895), 493. [“If anyone wishes to see how much of the fame of an author of the second rank hangs on his best work, he should read ‘Pym’s Narrative’ and ‘Rodman’s Journal‘” in the Stedman-Woodberry edition. “These tales of adventure are commonplace and easily equalled. Not so with the real Poe.”]

Wolfe, George H. ed. Faulkner: Fifty Years after 7‘he Marble Faun’ (University, Ala.: Univ. of Alabama Press, 1977), pp. 22, 71, 91, 93. [Faulkner’s misreprmentation of the heritage of Poe, Longfellow, and Hawthorne — who were “European” because eastern — is noted, as is the similarity between Poe and Faulkner’s careers (the artist is continually attempting to give birth to himself) . The Sound and the Fury, like “Usher,” rreats the “sexuality of history.”]

Reviews

Carlson, Eric W. Review of Robert L. Caserio, Plot, Story, and the Novel: From Dickens and Poe to the Modern Period. Poe Studies Association Newsletter, 8 (Spring 1980), 4. tIn contrast to Dickens, “whose recognition scenes imply moral concerns,” Poe emphasizes method in plotting. Carlson chastises Caserio’s ignoring of Poe’s aesthetic-philosophical perspectives and his serious gothic ventures.]

———————— : Review of Burton R. Pollin, Poe: Creator of Words (rev. ed.). Poe Studies Association Newsletter, 8 (Fall 1980), 3. [An informative review, mentioning differences from and improvements over the 1974 edition. Carlson also notes leads offered for further Poe studies.]

————————. Review of Studies in the American Renaissance: 1978. Poe Studies Association Newsletter, 7 (Fall 1979), 3-4. [Particulars on Roland W. Nelson’s “Apparatus for a Definitive Edition of Poe’s Eureka.”]

Clarkson, Paul S. Review of John Carl Miller, Poe’s Helen Remembers. Worcester, Mass., Sunday Telegram, 5 April 1981, p. 10E. [Argues the importance of Miller’s making available hitherto recondite information and outlines the vicissitudes of biographical information concerning Poe during much of the nineteenth century.]

Dameron, J. Lasley. Review of Martin Bickman, The Unsosunded Centre: Jungian Studies in American Renaissance. Poe Studies Association Newsletter, 9 (Spring 1981), 2. [A positive, informative review which comments on Bickman’s study of “Poe’s vision of the psychological feminine” in the first “To Helen,” Eureka, “The Assignation,” “Ligeia,” and “Morella.”]

Davis, Robert C. Review of John T. Irwin. American Hieroglyphics: The Symbol of the Egyptian Hieroglyphic in the American Renaissance. American Literature, 52 (1981), 656-659. [Irwin’s chief claim is that “Poe traditionally has been the poor relation in the American Renaissance (and his work has been its apocrypha).” Davis feels Irwin combines the best from European criticism of Poe with current theories of reading fiction.]

DeFalco, Joseph M. Review of Julian Symons, The Tell-Tale Heart: The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe. Poe Studies Association Newsletter, 7 (Fall 1979), 2. [A negative review, locating Symons among those with little fresh insight into Poe’s life and works who maintain the writer’s legendary sensationalism.] [column 2:]

Fisher, Benjamin Franklin IV. Review of John Carl Miller, Building Poe Biography. University of Mississippi Studies in English, NS 1 (1980), 140-142. [A positive review, noting Miller’s making convenient documents relevant to Poe’s life and career.]

————————. Review of Donald B. Stauffer, A Short History of American Poetry. Poe Studies Association Newsletter, 7 (Fall 1979), 3. [Praises Stauffer’s objective survey of Poe — which places him as an American Romantic — and the analyses of “To Helen” (1831), “To One in Paradise,” and “Eldorado.”]

————————. Review of Studies in the American Renaissance: 1977. Poe Studies Association Newsletter, 7 (Fall 1979), 3. [Comments on essays by Burton R. Pollin on “Murders,” Joseph J. Moldenhauer on “The Spectacles” manuscript, and J. Gerald Kennedy on Poe and magazine writing about premature burial. Others, by Rita K. Gollin on Hawthorne’s dreamers and Madeline Stern on periodical writing by Louisa M. Alcott, are placed in regard to Poe studies.]

Fowler, Virginia C. Review of Julian Symons, The TellTale Heart. College Literature, 7(1980), 61-62. [Generally unfavorable, emphasizing Symons’ contradictions in handling Poe’s life and personality in regard to the writings. Fowler believes that the scant attention to the works is a defeat]

Goldhurst, William. “Haunted by the Spirit of Edgar,” Washington Post, 27 April 1980, p. 1. [In this review of John Carl Miller’s Poe’s Helen Remembers, Goldhurst assesses the need for rectifying the biographical slanders propagated by Griswold, notes how the materials conveyed to J. H. Ingram by Mrs. Whitman assisted materially in this cause, and compliments Miller’s editing of the Whitman-lngram correspondence. This correspondence provides revealing documents in the cause of clarifying Poe’s biography.]

Grabo, Norman S. Review of Michael Davitt Bell, The Development of American Romance: The Sacrifice of Relation. American Literatsure, 53(1981), 507-508. [Grabo singles out Bell’s highlighting Poe against a background of spiritualism as material for commendation.]

Kopley, Richard. Review of Brian Attebery, The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature. Poe Studies Association Newsletter, 9 (Spring 1981), 2. [A sympathetic notice, finding flaws, though, in the remarks about “Usher” and Pym.]

Lachtman, Howard. “Except for Art and Heart,” The Chronicle Review, 2 October 1978, pp. 8-9. [Julian Symons’ The Tell-Tale Heart is simplistic regarding Poe’s life and fails to analyze the subtleties of his art.]

Ljungquist, Kent. “J. H. Ingram and Mrs. Whitman,” The Poe Messenger, 10 (Summer 1980), 2-3. [Summarizes the primary features of Poe’s Helen Remembers, John Carl Miller’s second book on J. H. Ingram’s labors with Poe biography, laments Miller’s scanty portrait of Ingram himself, and places Mrs. Whitman and Ingram as typical of attitudes toward Poe during the 1870’s.]

————————. Review of John Carl Miller, ed. Poe’s Helen Remembers. Poe Studies Association Newsletter, 8(1980), 2 [Observing a too-cloudy emergence of Ingram in this book, Ljungquist praises Miller’s editing procedures and his making convenient the materials marshalled.]

————————. “Two-Thirds of Ketterer’s Trilogy,” Gothic, 2 (1980), 26. [In this review of David Ketterer’s The Rationale of Deception in Poe and Frankenstein’s Creation, Ljungquist stresses the value for Poe studies of the author’s view of Poe’s arabesque even though Ketterer’s ambitious survey of all of Poe’s work is often cursory.]

Pollin, Burron R. Review of Elizabeth Phillips, Edgar Allan Poe: An American Imagination Three Essays. Poe Studies Association Newsletter, 8 (Spring 1980), 3. [Although Phillips is credited with recurring insights, she is castigated for failing to coordinate her materials thoroughly and soundly. The [page 22:] opinion that Poe’s failure to mention particular artists or their work implies his unfamiliarity with them, moreover, is questionable: he often adapted from sources about which he remained silent.]

————————. Review of Leona Rasmussen Phillips, Edgar Allan Poe: An Annotated Bibliography. Poe Studies Association Newsletter, 8 (Spring 1980), 2. [A deservedly hostile review of a publication rife with errors, which stresses why the book ought not appear among reputable Poe studies.]

Quinn, Patrick F. Review of John Evangelist Walsh, Plumes in the Dust: The Love Affair of Edgar Allan Poe and Fanny Osgood. American Literature, 53(1981), 516-517. [Imperfect interpretation of T. O. Mabbott’s comments about the Osgood-Poe situation combine with too much speculation to produce what “cannot be claimed as a serious biographical essay.”]

Reilly, John E. Review of John T. Irwin, American Hieroglyphics: The Symbol of Egyptian Hieroglyphics in the American Renaissance. Poe Studies Association Newsletter, 8 (Fall 1980), 2-3. [An unsympathetic review, suggesting that Irwin’s argument is “intricate . . . and sometimes convoluted.”]

Rowe, John Carlos. Review of John T. Irwin, American Hieroglyphics. Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 36(1981), 206-211. [A positive review emphasizing Irwin’s concern with oppositions and their implications for identity in Poe’s work for which Pym is a key text. Rowe notes that Irwin makes little use of concepts of doubling in Poe.]

Sealts, Merton M., Jr. Review of Martin Bickman, The Unsounded Centre: Jungian Studies in American Romanticism. American Literature, 53(1981), 339-340. [Because there may be fewer “convergences” between Jung and Poe than Bickman perceives, the chapter on Poe, as well as that on Whitman, has limitations.]

Schuyler, David. Review of Celia Tichi, New World, New Earth: Environmental Reform in American Literature from the Puritans to Whitman. New England Quarterly, 54(1981), 295-297. [“The Domain of Arnheim” is arguably the most significant literary statement about environmental land reform in American literature.]

Smith, Henry Nash. Review of Herbett F. Smith, The Po pular American Novel, 1865-1920, and Brian Attebery, The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature. Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 36(1981), 193-196. [A continuing tradition of American fantasy originates in Irving (“Rip Van Winkle”), Poe’s gothic fiction (“Usher”), and Hawthorne (“Feathertop”).]

Spengemann, William G. Review of Michael Davitt Bell, The Development of American Romance: The Sacrifice of Relation. Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 36(1981),201-205. [Poe’s fiction, and that by others, responds to the notion of romance as corrupting. Poe, Melville, and Hawthorne had Irving on their minds when they wrote fiction, and Poe radically explored the possibility that truth might be attained through imagination.]

Weiner, Bruce Ira. Reviews of Benjamin Franklin Fisher IV, ea., Poe at Work: Seven Textual Studies, and The Very Short Spirit of Cordiality: The Literary Uses of Alcohol and Alcoholism in the Tales of Edgar Allan Poe; and of David Ketterer, The Rationale of Deception in Poe. University of Mississippi Studies in English, NS I (1980), 135-139. [All of these studies alter the image of Poe as a gloomy gothicist into a figure of greater urbanity who perceives the ridiculousness inherent in gothic extravagance. Fisher’s Poe at Work is a valuable pioneering volume of textual examination, and Ketterer emphasizes Poe as idealistic visionary.]

———————— . Review of David Ketterer, The Rationale of Deception in Poe. Poe Studies Association Newsletter, 8 (Spring 1980), 3-4. [Sympathetic to Ketterer’s theories, Weiner states that the visionary perceived in Poe may stem from Ketterer’s personal idealism. Weiner also comments that Ketterer challenges those who find skepticism in Poe: it may be their own.]


∞∞∞∞∞∞∞


Associated Article(s) and Related Material:

  • None

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

[S:0 - PSDR, 1980]