Text: Anonymous, “Death of Edgar A. Poe,” Vicksburg Tri-Weekly Whig (Vicksburg, MS), vol. XI, no. 127, October 20, 1849, p. 2, col. 2

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DEATH OF EDGAR A. POE. — We regret to announce that Poe, the poet and critic, died in Baltimore, on the 7th after an illness of four or five days. He was a native of Maryland, but was reared by a foster-father at Richmond, whore he lately spent some time on a visit. He was about thirty-eight years of age. The Raven and several other poems from his pen are greatly admired in this country and England. His tales exhibit rare felicity of style and abundant intellectual power. His criticisms are unnecessarily personal and severe, but they could have been written only by a master. Poe, with all his eccentricities and faults, was generally admitted to be a great writer, and few who read his productions can fail to perceive that the author of them was capable of giving the world better things — works that might have been justly admired by many succeeding generations — was outgrowing the grievous faults of habit and of thought which long obscured, to a great extent, the brilliancy of his intellect, and, in all probability, he would soon have taken a very honorable position among the literary men of the age. It is probable that his recent attempt to break suddenly off his habits of dissipation may have hastened his death. If it did, he was the victim not of a month of temperance but of years of drinking. When a man has gone so far that sudden reformation jeopards his life, it is not probable that he has enough firmness of will left to effect a gradual emancipation. Of two evils then, the risk of dying in the sudden attempt is less than the almost absolute certainty of being wound more closely in the toils of the demon while trying the slow and method of removing them one by one.