Text: Sidney P. Moss, “Works Pertinent to Poe's Libel Suit,” Poe's Major Crisis, 1970, pp. 223-225 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 223:]

Dedmond, Francis B. “Poe's Libel Suit Against T. D. English.” Boston Public Library Quarterly, V (Jan. 1953), 31-7.

[Despite the misleading title, for Poe did not bring a suit against English but against Hiram Fuller and Augustus Clason, this article accurately sketches the outlines of Poe's lawsuit.]

——. “The War of the Literati: Documents of the Legal Phase.” Notes and Queries, CXCVIII (July 1953), 303-8.

[This article presents Poe's Declaration of Grievances and English's Deposition.]

Gravely, William Henry, Jr. “The Early Political and Literary Career of Thomas Dunn English.” Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. University of Virginia, 1953.

[This is the fullest and most thorough biography of Thomas Dunn English available, though it concludes with English's leaving Philadelphia for Virginia in 1852 and though, given the obscurity of the man, some of the information is necessarily fragmentary and conjectural. The most pertinent chapters are 6, 8, and 9.]

Harrison, James A., ed. The Literati (Vol. 15) and Letters of Edgar Allan Poe (Vol. 17) in The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, 17 vols. New York: AMS Press, 1965.

[Reprinted from the original 1902 Virginia edition, these two volumes in this still standard, though incomplete, edition are quite pertinent to Poe's lawsuit. Volume 17, in addition to containing “Mr. English's Reply to Mr. Poe,” “Mr. Poe's Reply to Mr. English and Others,” English's “In Reply to Mr. Poe's Rejoinder,” also contains letters from certain crucial correspondents to Poe, which I have drawn upon in this study. Harrison makes some mistakes in discussing the lawsuit, the mostglaring of which is that “English brought criminal charges of obtaining money under false pretences and of forgery against Poe” (XVII, 233). It was Poe who brought charges, not against English but against Fuller and Clason, and the lawsuit was not a criminal prosecution but a civil one.] [page 224:]

Hurley, Leonard B. “A New Note in the War of the Literati.” American Literature, VII (Jan. 1936), 376-94.

[Hurley presents his discovery of the Poe-Hammerhead satires in English's novel, 1844; or, The Power of the “S.F.”]

Mabbott, Thomas Ollive, ed. “The Letters from George W. Eveleth to Edgar Allan Poe.” Bulletin of the New York Public Library, XXVI (March 1922), 171-95.

[A valuable collection of letters from a young medical student in Maine whose favorite author was Poe. His inquiries induced Poe to comment often on the lawsuit as well as on other relevant matters, such as the authorship of “An Author in Europe and America.” This work is especially helpful when read in con/unction with Poe's own letters to Eveleth.]

Moriarty, Jos. F. A Literary Tomahawking: The Libel Action of Edgar Allan Poe vs. Thomas Dunn English — A Complete Report of the Documents of the Case and Materials about Poe Published for the First Time. Privately printed, 1963.

[This narrative of Poe's lawsuit contains some of the better known documents such as Poe's articles on Thomas Dunn English, English's replies to Poe's articles, many of the trial documents, and a few of Hiram Fuller's statements on the libel action. Despite its subtitle, this study is an incomplete report of the case and much of the material in it had prior publication. Inasmuch as this work has eluded Poe bibliographers, and myself too until my own manuscript was in press, a word about it seems in order. It consists of eleven pages of typewritten front matter, eleven unpaginated illustrations, and 149 typewritten pages of text, all reproduced by planograph. According to the Union Card Catalog, three libraries have copies of this work, the Library of Congress, New York Public Library, and the California State Library at Sacramento.]

Moss, Sidney P. “Poe, Hiram Fuller and the Duyckinck Circle.” American Book Collector, XVIII (Oct. 1967), 8-18.

[This article traces Fuller's persecution of Poe and how the Duyckinck circle, especially Simms, Duyckinck, Mathews, and Poe, sought to offset the effects.]

——. Poe's Literary Battles: The Critic in the Context of His Literary Milieu. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1963.

[A work that puts Poe's critical documents in their contemporary context, [page 225:] it provides a thoroughgoing account of Poe's ma/or quarrels with the Boston and New York coteries, and traces, along with other events, the Longfellow war, the Boston Lyceum “hoax,” and the episode involving Frances Osgood and Elizabeth Ellet — essential background for understanding the libel suit.]

Nichols, Mary Gove. “Reminiscences of Edgar Allan Poe.” New York: The Union Square Book Shop, 1931.

[These reminiscences by a friend of Poe and one of the literati (reprinted from an article that first appeared in the Six Penny Magazine of February 1863) help us to see Poe in his Fordham retreat.]

Oliphant, Mary C. Simms, Alfred Taylor Odell, and T. C. Duncan Eaves, eds. The Letters of William Gilmore Simms, 5 vols. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1952-1956.

[Volume 2, which contains Simms's letters written from 1845-1849, is especially pertinent to the lawsuit. I have drawn upon this volume for the one Simms letter reproduced in this study.]

Ostrom, John Ward, ed. The Letters of Edgar Allan Poe, 2 vols. New York: Gordian Press, 1966.

[Reprinted from the Harvard University Press publication with a Supplement that brings the work up to date, volume 2 is especially valuable for Poe letters pertaining to the libel suit. I have not hesitated to draw upon this work for transcriptions of Poe letters, because I have found only one transcriptual error in it in all the years I have used it.]

Reece, James B. “Poe and the New York Literati: A Study of the ‘Literati’ Sketches and of Poe's Relations with the New York Writers.” Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Duke University, 1954.

[This work contains detailed biographical sketches of the thirty-eight writers whom Poe touched upon in “The Literati” series and traces Poe's relations to them.]

Schreiber, Carl. “A Close-Up of Poe.” Saturday Review of Literature, III (9 Oct. 1926), 165-7.

[This article deserves mention only because it was the first to print a fragment of the court record, namely, portions of English's Deposition.]