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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to express my indebtedness to the three Philadelphia libraries in which I did the bulk of my research: the Van Pelt Library of the University of Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia Free Library, and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Howell J. Heaney of the Free Library's Rare Book Department, who placed the Richard Gimbel Collection of Poeana at my disposal, and to Timothy Bratton and his co-workers at the Historical Society, who provided me with numerous files of Philadelphia newspapers.

I also wish to express my gratitude to four librarians who replied to multiple requests for information and thus became my frequent correspondents: Joyce Ann Tracy, Curator of Newspapers at the American Antiquarian Society; Rodney G. Dennis, Curator of Manuscripts in the Houghton Library of Harvard University; James Lawton, Curator of Manuscripts at the Boston Public Library; and David Farmer of the Humanities Research Center of the University of Texas at Austin.

For permission to quote or reproduce manuscripts, I am indebted to the Library of Congress, the Alderman Library of the University of Virginia, the Huntington Library, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University, the Pierpont Morgan Library of New York City, the Butler Library of Columbia University, the Connecticut Historical Society, the Humanities Research Center of the University ­[page iv:] of Texas at Austin, the Houghton Library of Harvard University, the Philadelphia Free Library, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and the Trustees of the Boston Public Library.

I am indebted to the Harvard University Press for permission to quote from John Ward Ostrom's edition of The Letters of Edgar Allan Poe and from Andrew Hilen's edition of The Letters of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; to the Brown University Press, for permission to quote from The Correspondence of Thomas Holley Chivers; and to the Oxford University Press, for permission to quote from the Pilgrim Edition of The Letters of Charles Dickens.

I have received valuable assistance from several Poe scholars. Professor Benjamin Franklin Fisher counseled this study in its early stages. For answering questions which I could not answer myself, I am indebted to Professor Ostrom and to Mrs. Thomas Ollive Mabbott. My most frequent correspondent has been Professor Burton R. Pollin, who gave me both information and encouragement.

I wish to express my gratitude to several members of the English Department of the University of Pennsylvania: to Professor Robert F. Lucid, who expressed an early interest in this study, and to Professors Hennig Cohen and Daniel Hoffman, who read the preliminary draft and suggested improvements. I am greatly indebted to Professor Robert Regan, my adviser, for sage advice and necessary correction; I am more indebted to him for those indispensable qualities in a teacher — kindness and patience.

My greatest debt is to my parents, Mr. and Mrs. Huguenin Thomas, Jr., of Savannah, Georgia, without whose constant support — both financial and moral — this study would not have been possible.