Text: Sidney P. Moss, “Preface,” Poe's Major Crisis, 1970, pp. vii-viii (This material is protected by copyright)

[page vii:]

In this book I present documents concerning Poe that have been declared “unlocated” or “inaccessible,” or whose existence others have not suspected or that they did not trouble to track down. These documents, together with those that others have uncovered, enable us to see the jigsaw puzzle of Poe's libel suit with its pieces in place for the first time.

The lawsuit, given its causes and consequences, constituted Poe's major crisis, whether of a biographical or literary nature, and deserves study in its own right. But it is also a dramatic device for reporting in depth Poe's last years. Moreover, the case serves as a stereoscopic viewer for seeing New York's literary world in three-dimensional perspective, and this book is, therefore, as much concerned with literary history and journalism as with biography, for Poe has to be projected against his background if he is to be understood. What especially drew me to the documentary method I adopted is that it gives the reader an acute sense of reality, a sense of being on the scene, something that a secondhand account fails to accomplish.

There are many obligations a researcher contracts in the course of his investigations, not the least of which are to the scholars who preceded him, and my Bibliography records my more palpable debts. There are other obligations I am pleased to acknowledge here, since Poe materials are scattered in libraries throughout the United States. A major one is to the people who manage the National Union Catalog and who publish its lists, the Union List of Newspapers and the Union List of Serials. My other major obligations are to the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library, the New York Historical Society, the Boston Public Library, the American Antiquarian Society, and the University of Virginia Library. The staffs of these libraries, as well as those of other libraries, who have proved cooperative and generous of their time are too many to thank here by name, but I have, I trust, thanked each of them individually.

There are special favors, however, that I have received from certain people and organizations that, with special pleasure, I record here: [page viii:]

Professor Frank Adams who, however offhandedly, suggested the project.

Professor Alan M. Cohn, Head of the Humanities Library at Southern Illinois University, who again proved one of the most able research librarians in the country.

Professors Eugene E. Bridwell, Jr., Kathleen D. Eads, and Hensley C. Woodbridge, also of Southern Illinois University Library, who helped me in many valuable ways.

Mr. Nathan Behrin, a court reporter of the New York Supreme Court for almost fifty years and until recently Historian of the National Shorthand Reporters’ Association, who with his special experience was able to clarify for me many of the legal questions concerning the libel suit.

Mr. Terence S. Martin and Mr. James W. Mock, graduate students in English at Southern Illinois University, who helped me to check the accuracy of the transcription of the documents.

Mrs. Carol Lawson for collaborating with me in translating E. D. Forgues's article on Poe.

The American Philosophical Society for a summer grant in 1966 to enable me to study the Duyckinck Manuscript Collection in the New York Public Library.

The Department of English, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and the Graduate School of Southern Illinois University for the support they have given me in this and other projects.

I am also obliged to the editors of The American Book Collector, the Poe Newsletter, and Papers on Language and Literature for permission to use some of the information that I first published in their journals. I am obliged, too, to the University of South Carolina Press for permission to reprint a Simms letter that appears in The Letters of William Gilmore Simms, Volume 2, collected and edited by Mary C. Simms Oliphant, Alfred Taylor Odell, and T. C. Duncan Eaves, copyright 1953 by the University of South Carolina Press.