Text: Anonymous, “Controversy on Poe's ‘Raven’,” Philadelphia Inquirer (Philadelphia, PA), [no volume or issue number specified], September 20, 1864, p. 2, col. 1

[page 2, column 1, continued:]

Controversy on Poe's “Raven.”

The controversy in literary circles about EDGAR A. POE, and poem of “The Raven,” still continues. The stupid fool who first made the charge of plagiarism keeps in the back ground, and has not attempted to make good his assertion, while the very oriental scholar to whom he appealed, Mr. W. H. PATTEN SAUNDERS, has published a letter in the Star, in which he declares his opinion “that the assertion is a mistake, which the author of it will doubtless clear up.” In the meantime, Mrs. McCREADY, the well known American elocutionist and public reader, has published a poem, called “The Fire-Fiend,” written by POE, and which was evidently the forerunner of the “Raven.” Mrs. McCREADY states that this was given to her by Mrs. CLEM [[CLEMM]], the mother-in-law of POE. “The Fire-Fiend” is hardly up to POE'S best standard, and is in fact an incomplete poem which he threw aside in disgust, but it contains some lines of gives great strength to and beauty, and its very existence gives the lie to the slander in question.