Text: J. W. Ostrom, B. R. Pollin, and J. A. Savoye, “Chapter 04,” The Collected Letters of Edgar Allan Poe — Vol. I: 1824-1845 (2008), pp. 225-330 (This material is protected by copyright)

Notes: For information on Neal, and the “first jog,” see the notes to LTR-24. (Neal had printed encouraging notices of Poe's poems in the Yankee and Boston Literary Gazette, September and December 1829.) “Thomas” probably refers to Poe's friend Frederick W. Thomas, who might have known Neal in Baltimore (see the notes to LTR-51b). Poe wrote several highly respectful letters to Neal (see LTR-21, LTR-24, LTR-49, and APXA-Neal), rendering inevitable his name in Such Friends, no. 238 (p. 18). Although he does not appear to have written the present letter on a Prospectus of the Penn, Poe's favor is surely in regard to promoting his plans for the projected magazine. More importantly, Neal's reply (CL-238) features a comment on Poe's use of “will” in the statements “I will be pardoned” and “For assurance that I will fulfil,” with Neal strongly suggesting “shall” instead. Neither of these quoted phrases appear in Poe's letter, but both are to be found in the June 1840 prospectus included in LTR-96. (It should be noted that Poe did not adopt Neal's corrections in subsequent revisions.) Thus Poe must already have had copies of the prospectus on hand early in June. In fact, he may have printed the prospectus through his connections at Burton's Gentleman's Magazine prior to resigning about June 1, and this action is possibly the means by which Burton became aware of Poe's efforts to establish his own magazine, something about which Poe felt compelled to comment in his [page 228:] reply (LTR-93) to a May 30, 1840 letter from Burton (CL-234). The same prospectus presumably provided the text for the notices published in the Philadelphia Spirit of the Times (June 12, 1840), the Philadelphia Saturday Courier (June 13, 1840), and the Columbia Spy (June 20, 1840). Assuming that Poe did write the present letter on a leaf of a prospectus, it must have been folded differently than LTR-96, allowing the page announcing the magazine to be removed.

Source: original MS (1 p.) in the Humanities Research Center of the University of Texas at Austin. The letter is addressed on the verso to “John Neal / New-York” and is postmarked “Philadelphia / Jun 3,” indicating that Poe's date is incorrect. When the letter was forwarded from New York to Neal in “Portland / Me,” the New York postmark “Jun 4” was added. No year date is given, but 1840 is established by Neal's reply, June 8, 1840 (CL-238). Neal's letter, fully dated, begins, “Yours of June 4, directed to New York, reached me but yesterday [in Portland].” On the MS below Poe's signature appears: “Portland February 3/67 — This autograph the last I have of Poor Poe / [signed] John Neal.”

Notes: Public announcement of Poe's Prospectus of the Penn Magazine appeared in the Philadelphia Spirit of the Times, June 12, 1840 (see J. Albert Robbins, “Edgar Poe and the Philadelphians,” PS, 5:48) and in the Saturday Courier, June 13 (see Quinn, p. 306). He also had printed a separate Prospectus, which he sometimes used for correspondence. When this form first appeared is not certain (but see LTR-94 note). On June 17, 1840 (LTR-95), Poe wrote Snodgrass: “Herewith you have my [page 229:] Prospectus.” LTR-145 reveals that Poe is out of Prospectuses by September 27, 1842 (and probably long before). During the last half of 1840 he used not only the June Prospectus but also the August revision as correspondence paper (see LTR-96 and note). By January 22, 1841, his letter to Conrad (LTR-108) is the last to use a Prospectus to carry his message and is also the last in which he mentions the [June or August] Prospectus. It seems safe, therefore, to date the present fragment, which alludes to a printed Prospectus, as not before early June of 1840, and not later than early [January (?)] 1841.

Source: facsimile of the original MS (fragment) in the Charles Hamilton Gallery catalog (No. 46), December 10, 1970, item 246, where it was first printed. The MS is described as “four lines on a small sheet (about 2 1/2 inches x 6 1/2 inches oblong) ... contained in a first edition of Edgar Poe and His Critics by Sarah Helen Whitman.” Poe may be answering a request for a Prospectus made by letter, or just a verbal one.

Notes: For Snodgrass’ essay, see the note to LTR-109. Burton's “lie” was apparently given in a letter to Snodgrass, cited in Poe's postscript. Concerning the premiums, see also LTR-88. There is no evidence that Snodgrass either went to Philadelphia or answered “immediately,” as Poe requested. For John L. Carey's Domestic Slavery (2d. edition, 1839), see the note with LTR-90. Poe's “unusual press of business” was in connection with his attempt to establish his Penn Magazine. Its publication was announced in the Philadelphia Saturday Courier, June 13, 1840, to appear on January 1, 1841 (see reprint of prospectus in Quinn, pp. 306-308; also in DP, pp. 212-223). Since Poe's letter to C. W. Thomson, June 28, 1840 (LTR-96), was written on the second leaf of the June 1840 prospectus, the present letter to Snodgrass was undoubtedly written on one of the blank pages of the advertisement; thus this evidence refutes Woodberry's statement that the prospectus was sent to press in August (see W [1909], 1:260), unless he referred to the revision of the June prospectus without recognizing the existence of the earlier one (see Quinn, p. 308). No correspondence is known between Lea & Blanchard's letter of November 20, 1839 (CL-220) and Poe's, dated August 13, 1841 (CL-318), so that Poe may have had no knowledge concerning the sale of his Tales. Upon publication of the book, Poe was to keep the copyright (see MS letter of Lea & Blanchard to Poe, September 28, 1839, CL-207) and receive about twenty copies for “private distribution” (see their letter to Poe, October 30, 1839, CL-212). Thus upon receipt of the complimentary copies, Poe had no need of further dealing with his publishers until August 15, 1841, when he suggested that they publish for him a new collection. A search of Blackwood's Magazine, subsequent to the date of the present letter, failed to reveal any review of Poe's Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque by John Wilson (“Christopher North”), editor of the English magazine, despite the postscript in LTR- 81. [page 232:]

Source: William Hand Browne's original transcript (Ingram Collection) for J. H. Ingram (see APXA-Snodgrass). The general content of the letter, particularly the reference to Snodgrass’ poem in the February 1840 issue of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, establishes the year date as 1840. The bracketed emendation is Woodberry's, not Browne's. On his transcript at this point, Browne noted that the MS original was mutilated and he supplied “You,” which Woodberry changed to “I” with greater justification, it would seem, considering the sense. Poe is answering Snodgrass’ letter of June 12, 1840 (CL-239).

Notes: Charles West Thomson (1798-1879) contributed poems to the American Museum, Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, Graham's Magazine, and the SLM, and to such literary annuals as The Atlantic Souvenir, The Token, and The Gift. With Wm. E. Burton, he issued the Literary Souvenir for 1838 and 1839. The son of Quakers, Thomson became an Episcopal minister in York, PA. At the time of Poe's letter, Thomson was a clerk in the Bank of the United States in Philadelphia (see Heartman & Canny, 1943, p. 39). Poe's “A Chapter on Autography” (Graham's, December 1841, 14:279) included Thomson, noting his poems as “characterised by tenderness and grace” (see H [Works], 15:226). Concerning Poe's leaving Burton's, see LTR-93 and notes. Poe misspelled his correspondent's name as Thompson, which may have been a fairly common error. Three of his contributions to Graham's in the first half of 1841 all carry his name correctly as “Thomson” in the respective bylines, but are credited in the index to the volume as “Thompson.”

The word “connexion” occurs often in Poe's works; all told, out of one hundred and twenty instances of both spellings, it is used in ten letters and, over all, there are about twenty instances spelled thus. Etymologically it is the original (from “nexus”; see the OED, which gives both spellings), and is preferred in the 1926 Fowler's, for example, but the 1996 edition concedes priority to “connection.” Poe had his dual option, however, and we must note simply his shifting irregularly from one to another, as he does in these letters — final comment being offered here, not for individual instances.

Source: photocopy of the original MS (1 p.), formerly in the collection of William H. Koester, and now in the Humanities Research Center of the University of Texas at Austin. The letter is written on the second blank page of the June 1840 prospectus of the Penn. The MS is somewhat worn in the folds. The letter is addressed on the verso of a separate leaf to “C. W. Thompson [sic] Esqr / Bank of the U. S. / Phila” and is postmarked June 29. In the MS, Poe first wrote “expences” in the middle of the third [page 234:] paragraph, then corrected the “c” to an “s” with the stroke of a pen. Poe is answering Thomson's note of June 26, 1840 (CL-241), which is unlocated. No reply to the present letter is known.

Notes: As noted, A. S. Cummings was the Corresponding Secretary of the Philomathean Society, which appears on Poe's address list as: “Philomathaean [sic] Soc. Pennsylvania Col. Gettysburg, Pa. (See let.[)]” (Such Friends, no. 211, p. 17). See also a possible Poe review, quoted in the note to LTR-120, where the writer mocks the reading of “poems to order before Philomathoean [sic] societies.” Several other letters from the archives of the society survive, including ones from Washington Irving (April 21, 1839), Horace Greeley (undated), and George R. Perkins (January 25, 1850). All of these letters thank the society for making the correspondents honorary members, almost certainly the same honor to which Poe refers. The prospectus itself no longer accompanies the letter, [page 235:] but just visible on the reverse side of the letter, at the top of the page, one can see a faint transfer image of “PROSPECTUS OF THE PENN MAGAZINE.” This bold heading distinguishes the particular version of the prospectus, making it identical to the one that Poe sent to Charles West Thomson on June 28, 1840 (LTR-96), reproduced by Moldenhauer (Descriptive Catalog, p. 46) and Blanck (BAL, 7:116-117, entry 16134A). Poe also sent a copy of the same prospectus to J. E. Snodgrass (June 17, 1840, LTR-95) and a variety of newspapers. A slightly revised version of the prospectus, with a noticeably different heading, was mailed to William Poe (August 14, 1840, LTR-97), Washington Poe (August 15, 1840, LTR-98), Joseph B. Boyd (August 20, 1840, LTR-100), and Thomas Holley Chivers (ca. August 20, 1840, CL-249). Poe's comment about having been away from Philadelphia, very similar to the opening line of LTR-97, is probably just a convenient excuse for his delay in replying.

Philomathean is the proper spelling of both the Gettysburg and New York City societies of that name, although derived incorrectly from the Greek word “philomatheia,”meaning the love of learning or knowledge. Beginning early and continuing throughout the nineteenth century, both nominal and adjectival forms were used (“philomathy,” “philomatic,” and “philomath”).

Source: photocopy of the original MS (1 p.) in the collection of Susan Jaffe Tane. Although it is pasted to another piece of paper, it is clear that there is no address or postmark on the reverse side of the page. Instead, it appears that the letter was folded inside the prospectus noted in the text, and that the address was written on the back of the prospectus.

Notes: See LTR-96a for a similar excuse for Poe's delay in replying. Contrast his comments about salary and drudgery in the present letter with LTR-54. For White's incapacity to appreciate Poe's labors, see White to Tucker, April 26, 1837: “If he [Paulding] would have been proud of praise from Poe, it would have been because he really admired the fellow's talents. — Like myself he was completely gulled” (Jackson, Poe and the SLM, pp. 114-115, excerpted in The Poe Log, p. 244). By describing his association with the New York Review as an “engagement,” Poe is intentionally inflating the nature and significance of his connection to that scholarly journal, undoubtedly hoping to impress his wealthy relative. Caleb S. Henry, editor of the New York Review from March 1837 (the year it was founded) to some time in 1838, wrote to the Reverend John H. Hopkins, who sent the letter to J. H. Ingram: “Poe was never engaged as a writer on the New York Review. He contributed of his own accord ... a review of Stephen's Incidents of Travel in Egypt, etc ... in [page 238:] the 2^d number ... Oct. 1837.” (Hopkins’ letter is now in the Ingram Collection, University of Virginia, under the date of March 13, 1875.) The reason Poe gives in this letter for leaving the SLM controverts the statement in the biographical account of the Philadelphia Saturday Museum (February 25 and March 4, 1843) that Rev. Francis L. Hawks “induced” him to leave Richmond to deal critical mayhem to the current “miserable literary trash” of the magazine writers (see Writings, 1:21 and 24). D. Thomas’ brief survey of the Hawks-Poe relationship in Poe in Philadelphia, p. 799, indicates Poe's adverse view of Hawks in 1844. Poe's letter to Robert Poe (CL-244) was probably written and sent, though its location is not known. The identity of Mr. Bayard and the significance of the reference to him are unknown. William Poe's letter of June 16, 1843 (CL-439) is the only other item in this correspondence known to be extant. It indicates, however, that Poe wrote to William before May 15, 1843 (CL-434). William answered it on May 15 (CL-435), and again on June 16 (CL-439). There is sometimes cited a letter from William, dated December 15, 1843; but as the script of the June letter could be read “Decem,” the letters are probably the same. William Poe entered Such Friends as no. 56 (p. 34), with brothers, Washington Poe, as no. 57 (pp. 33-34), and Robert, as no. 55 (p. 33). For more on these Poe relatives see LTR-98 and LTR-69, and notes. For other instances of Milton's phrase “will not willingly let die,” from The Reason of Church Government of 1641, see “Marginalia” M-197 (Writings, 2:325-327); and his entry on Mrs. Osgood from “Literati” (H [Works], 15:96).

Source: photocopy of the original MS (2 pp.) in the Huntington Library. The envelope is addressed to Mr. William Poe, Augusta, GA. Though the letter is dated August 15, the postal cancellation is August 14; the address occupies the center portion of page 2 of the letter. (The letter was possibly written on page 3 of a June prospectus of the Penn, or, more likely, the revision, and the address on page 4. The prospectus no longer accompanies the letter.) The MS is worn at the folds and torn at the right edge so that one last word or two for eleven lines are wanting; in several places ink has faded. A notarized copy of this letter, made July 16, 1903 and authenticated by William T. Poe, grandson of William Poe, is now in the Virginia State Library. This copy, like the others by the same notary public, is not wholly accurate, but it does permit restoration of certain portions missing in the MS, given in brackets. The location of William Poe's original letter (CL-243) is unknown. [page 239:]

Notes: Washington Poe (1800-1876), of Macon, GA, was the son of William Poe (1755-1804) and the brother of William and Robert Poe. Without William's letter of July 28, 1840 (CL-243), it is difficult to evaluate whether or not Poe is exaggerating when claiming that Washington's “brothers in Augusta have kindly offered me every aid in their power,” although the contents of Poe's letter in reply (LTR-97) suggest some encouragement, and William was still offering “great sincerity of feeling for you & yours” and inquiring about “your prospects in getting out the ‘Stylus’ “ as late as June 16, 1843 (CL-439). All three gentlemen are listed in Such Friends, as nos. 55-57 (pp. 33-34).

Source: facsimile of the original MS (1 p.) in Gill, facing p. 114, where it was first printed. The location of the original MS is unknown. The year date is not given by Gill. W [1909], 1:335 gives “1842.” The correct year, however, must be 1840, for Poe to William Poe, August 14, 1840 (LTR-97), says he will write to Washington Poe and send a prospectus. (Compare also the contents of both letters). No other letters are extant between Poe and Washington Poe, though Edgar wrote William Poe, April 12, 1836 (see LTR-60), that he had replied to a letter from Washington, dated probably about March 29, 1836 (CL-130).

Notes: The present letter is the last of the four known Poe letters to Lucian Minor, the other three being: October 31, 1835 (LTR-51a); February 5, 1836 (LTR-55); and March 10, 1836 (LTR-59). It is interesting that the second and third letters were written by Poe for White, publisher of the SLM, and the first one probably was too; only the present letter, therefore, was written by Poe in his own interest. The note “(over),” cancelled by Poe, possibly indicates his original intention to write more, as shown by his apology in the last sentence, although the MS has nothing written on the verso beyond the address and postmark (see Moldenhauer, Descriptive Catalog, p. 49, item 39). The identical “apology” is repeated [page 242:] in LTR-100, written to another correspondent and dated later by two days, with no further explication. It represents one of the numerous solicitations sent out by Poe during the summer (see other letters of this period).

Source: original MS (1 p.) in the Humanities Research Center of the University of Texas at Austin. The letter was first printed in full in The Letters [1948], although Ostrom presumed incorrectly that Poe must have continued the letter on the back of page 1 and that it was probably written on a revised form of the June Prospectus of the Penn. The MS is a one-page, single foolscap size sheet, and is not written on a Prospectus. On the verso is the address: “Lucian Minor, Esq^r/ Charlottesville/ Va.” Minor also noted: “Edgar A. Poe/ rec^d Aug. 20. 1840.” The letter was addressed to Lucian Minor, Charlottesville, Virginia. No reply from Minor is known.

Notes: Quinn, p. 308, n. 2, says that the only Joseph B. Boyd of Cincinnati in 1840 “... is a watch maker, an unlikely person for Poe to ask for help.” Poe's earlier correspondence with Boyd (see LTR-89) seems sufficient evidence for Poe's solicitation of aid in acquiring subscribers to the Penn from one who had asked a favor of Poe; as being a “watch maker,” perhaps with useful connections to a wealthy clientele, Boyd might secure the “one or two names” Poe desired. He seems also to have been a friend of L. J. Cist (see LTR-105). As one might reasonably anticipate from this highly deferential letter, Boyd's name appears in Such Friends as no. 49 (pp. 12 and 20).

Source: photocopy of the original MS (1 p.) in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The postal cancellation is dated September 3 at Philadelphia; the letter directed to Joseph B. Boyd, Esqr., Cincinnati, Ohio. As noted by Quinn, the letter is written on a revised form of the June prospectus of the Penn: page 1 has the prospectus, page 2 is blank, page 3 has the letter, and page 4, the address. There is no known answer to Poe's letter.

Notes: John Tomlin (1806-1850) was postmaster of Jackson, TN. An occasional contributor to various literary magazines himself, Tomlin was an admirer of Poe. His first known letter to Poe is dated October 16, 1839 (CL-210) — his last, February 23, 1844 (CL-467). When the Penn was postponed, Tomlin wrote (April 30, 1841, CL-279) asking Poe if “The Devil's Visit” might be published in Graham's. Although a few contributions from Tomlin do appear in Graham's in 1841, this tale is not among them. Saint Dunstan was the archbishop of Canterbury 961-980, and is the patron saint of goldsmiths. His encounter with the Devil was a famous English folktale in which Dunstan, engaged in his original trade as a blacksmith, was visited by the Devil. Hoping to tempt him into sin, the Devil was disguised as a beautiful woman, but Dunstan saw the cloven hooves beneath the dress and grabbed the Devil's nose with red hot pincers. Not so easily discouraged, the Devil returned, this time disguised as a traveller in need of a horseshoe, but again Dunstan saw through the ruse and beat him so thoroughly that the Devil promised never to enter a house with a horseshoe over the door.

Source: photocopy of the original MS (1 p.) in the Huntington Library. It is written on an August 1840 version of the Prospectus of the Penn (BAL 7:117, item 16134B), with the word “(over)” written at the bottom. The letter is on page 3 of the prospectus, the address on page 4. The address reads: “John Tomlin Esq^r / Jackson / Tennessee” and is marked “Single — Paid.” The letter carries a Philadelphia postmark, dated September 17. Poe is replying to Tomlin's letter, dated before September [page 245:] 16 (CL-252), which was itself possibly an answer to one from Poe, dated ca. August- September (CL-251), soliciting subscriptions for the Penn.

Notes: Dr. Pliny Earle (1809-1892), physician and psychiatrist, became superintendent of the Friends’ Hospital for the Insane, Frankford, PA, in 1840. He published a number of works on hospitals for the insane and some poetry (DAB, 5:595-596). Poe's Penn Magazine, enthusiastically promoted for January 1841, never appeared. Poe published a review of Earle's Marathon and Other Poems (Philadelphia: H. Perkins, 1841) and seems to have planned a notice on Earle's A Visit to Thirteen Asylums for the Insane In Europe (Philadelphia: Dobson, 1841). Earle was perhaps only slightly linked to Poe's tale “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether” of April 1844 (TOM [T&S], 3:1001). See LTR-322 for [page 246:] a brief but favorable comment about Dr. Earle's poetry; and also D. Thomas, Poe in Philadelphia, pp. 224-225 and 752-754.

Source: photocopy of the original MS (1 p.), formerly in the collection of William H. Koester, and now in the Humanities Research Center of the University of Texas at Austin. The address, written on the back of the page, is directed to “D^r Pliny Earle, / Frankford, / Pa.” and in lower left corner appears “Friends’ Asylum”; it is postmarked Philadelphia, October 12. It is endorsed, probably by Earle, as “Edgar A Poe 10 mo 1840,” along with a list of names, written in pencil. Poe is replying to Earle's letter of October 2, 1840 (CL-255).

Notes: Richard Henry Stoddard (1825-1903) was born in Hingham, MA, and became a minor literary figure and editor in New York. His Recollections (1903) are not very flattering to Poe, and his ostensibly objective articles on Poe reveal a lingering sense of bitterness towards his subject and are not always reliable. Of some interest may be Stoddard's comment to Mrs. Whitman after reading two or three of Poe's letters to her: “the letters are curious, very curious indeed. The fact is that the more I read about Poe the less I understand him. I am too commonplace a person to understand unusual developments of genius” (quoted in Mrs. Whitman's letter to J. H. Ingram, February 16, 1874, printed in Miller, Poe's Helen Remembers, p. 27). For circumstances of the request by Stoddard, and his hostile “relations” with Poe, see Writings, 4:152-153; DP, 200-205; and Pollin, “Stoddard's Elegiac Sonnet on Poe,” PS, 18:29-32. Poe essentially copied the poem from the SLM, January 1837 (3:32), but the present version differs in punctuation from other printed versions of the poem, fully documented in TOM [Poems], 1:311-312, which took this letter into account. Though Stoddard edited The Works of EAP in 1884, he did not print the above Poe letter, nor the sonnet. For more data on Poe's life relating to this poem see Pollin, “Poe's ‘Sonnet to Zante’: Sources and Associations,” Comparative Literature Studies, 5:303-315; and TOM [Poems], 1:310-311.

Source: photocopy of the original MS (1 p.), formerly in the collection of H. Bradley Martin, and now in the collection of Mrs. Susan J. Tane. No envelope accompanies the MS. Stoddard's own statement (Recollections Personal and Literary, p. 213) that Griswold gave him the MS of the sonnet as a souvenir of Poe's autograph, is discredited by the MS itself. According to Whitty, the MS letter was sold by E. C. Stedman, executor of Mr. Stoddard's estate. The Anderson catalog of November 11, 1924 says: “A note at foot of the mount states that ‘This letter was addressed to Richard H. Stoddard, and by him given to his nurse Pedro N. Piedro a short time before his death.’.” In his only known letter to Stoddard, Poe is answering a letter of October 10, 1840 (CL-256a), which is unlocated but obviously asked for a sample of his handwriting. Stoddard apparently wrote Poe a second time in 1845 (CL-542). [page 248:]

Notes: Frederick William Thomas (1806-1866) proved a real friend to Poe, whose letters to Thomas ring true, revealing a warmth and sincerity often lacking in those to other correspondents (see APXA-Thomas). According to Thomas (CL-262), the “leading editor” of the St. Louis Bulletin was a man named Churchill. In “A Chapter on Autography,” however, Poe identifies the editor as George G. Foster (Graham's, December 1841). Thomas’ Clinton Bradshaw (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea, & Blanchard, 1835) was reviewed, not too favorably, by Poe in the SLM (December 1835, 2:68; see Writings, 5:74); East and West (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea, & Blanchard, 1836) and Howard Pinckney (Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard, 1840) are also referred to in Poe's “Autography” (Graham's, December 1841). Replying to Poe's letter, Thomas writes: “I regret you do not like H. P. [Howard Pinckney] as much as C B [Clinton Bradshaw], but I am not certain that I do myself — our first book like our [page 250:] first love ever has the warmest place in our affections” (Thomas to Poe, December 7, 1840). For John Sturdivant's Congress Hotel, a well-known meeting place in Philadelphia, see The Poe Log, pp. 295, 303-311, and 380-381. Thomas sent Poe MS-extracts from his long poem, “The Adventures of a Poet,” for use in the Penn (see Thomas’ autobiography, cited above, and his letter of December 7, 1840, noted above, as well as “terms” from an agent in St. Louis, who would handle the Penn.) Silverman (p. 158) notes “Billy Barlow” as the stage name of a low comedian who committed suicide; in the present letter, it is an obvious reference to William E. Burton, who was born and raised in England. (For more information on Burton, see the notes to LTR-93.) Graham bought Burton's Gentleman's Magazine in November 1840, merged it with the Casket (which he had recently purchased from Samuel Atkinson), and called the combination Graham's Magazine (see American Magazines, 1:545). The new magazine began the year with a total of some 3,500 subscribers from Burton's and some 1,500 from the Casket (see Quinn, p. 309). See LTR-88, and the note, for material on John Frost; also The Poe Log, p. xxv. Needless to say, Frost's name is used for Poe's playful coinage, a habit discussed in the ninth paragraph of the introduction to PCW. Thomas’ sister was Frances Ann Thomas (see LTR-124 and LTR-131). Poe entered F. W. Thomas into Such Friends, as no. 47 (p. 36).

Poe's use of “in petto” suggests a mistaken understanding of Italian, of which he had a shaky grasp (see Writings, 2:155-156 note h). The French word “petit” means little or small, whereas the Italian means “in the chest or breast,” therefore, “in secret.” The only remark on this error from American critics seems to be in Silverman's biography of Poe (p. 120). There are eight or nine instances of this misinterpreted phrase in Poe's varied works. Curious is Poe's repeated misspelling of the title of his friend's novel Howard Pinckney as “Pinkney.”

Source: photocopy of the original MS (1 p.), formerly in the collection of William H. Koester, and now in the Humanities Research Center of the University of Texas at Austin. The address, on the back of the page, is directed to “F. W. Thomas Esq^r / S^t Louis / Mo” and is postmarked from Philadelphia, November 23. This is Poe's first certain letter to Thomas, and is an answer to Thomas’ letter of November 6, 1840 (CL-258), which is unlocated. Phillips, 1:438, implies a much earlier set of letters, dating back to 1836. Given Poe's friendly and familiar tone, it seems highly probable that the present letter represents some continuation of a communication already established. [page 251:]

Notes: Lewis Jacob Cist (1818-1885) was an editor, publisher, and minor poet. Later, he owned one of the largest autograph collections in the country (see Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1:617). Cist and Joseph B. Boyd, both of Cincinnati, were interested in Poe's proposed Penn Magazine. Concerning Cist, see LTR-125 and note; concerning Boyd, see LTR-100 and note. Although Poe steadfastly refused to accept repeated defeats and failures along the way, the Penn Magazine was never published. For Poe's association with Cist, see Pollin, “The Living Writers of America,” SAR 1991, pp. 195, n. 118. See also LTR-169a. Curiously, Poe's claim of illness, if genuine, is not mentioned in his letter [page 252:] of one day later to J. P. Kennedy (LTR-106), though it is repeated in his letter of January 6, 1841 (LTR-106a) to N. Biddle, and January 17, 1841 (LTR-107) to J. E. Snodgrass. Poe may be merely inventing a convenient excuse for delaying the appearance of the magazine without admitting the more serious troubles which would ultimately mean that the venture never proceeded beyond the planning stage.

Source: photocopy of the original MS (1 p.), formerly in the collection of H. Bradley Martin, but currently unlocated. Cist's letter of December 7, 1840 (CL-261), is also unlocated.

Notes: Through the summer and fall of 1840 Poe had been working to launch his Penn Magazine, often writing letters on the printed prospectuses. He wrote Thomas, November 23, 1840 (LTR-104), that the first number would be published January 1, 1841; now to Kennedy, he says March 1. Although Poe constantly nourished his hope of establishing his dream magazine, it was never issued. As one might expect, Poe's early benefactor became no. 226 in Such Friends (pp. 28-29). No answer to this letter, however, in the form of a contribution or letter, is known.

Source: photocopy of the original MS (1 p.) in the Peabody Institute Library. This is Poe's first known letter to Kennedy since that of June 7, 1836 (LTR-68). No letters from Kennedy for the same period are known.

Notes: Nicholas Biddle (1786-1844) was a former president of the Second Bank of the United States. In 1812-1814, he had served as editor of the Port Folio (Philadelphia), continuing the pseudonymous identity of “Oliver Oldschool,” but changing the character of the magazine in the direction of becoming a review (American Magazines, 1:223 and 239-240.) Prior to his editorship, he had contributed numerous articles on art and literature. Within a short time, he became interested in pursuing politics, leaving the reins of the Port Folio in other hands. According to his great-grandson, Mr. Charles J. Biddle, the family lived at Seventh and Spruce Streets during the winter and at the rural estate of Andalusia in the summer. Andalusia was located in Bensalem Township, Bucks County, PA, on a bank of the Delaware River, about a mile and a half northeast of the Philadelphia city line. It took its name from the province of Andalusia, Spain. The elegant Greek Revival mansion, designed by Thomas U. Walter, still stands, filled with period furniture and other treasures. It may have been during a visit with Mr. Biddle at Andalusia, probably in the fall of 1840, or before, that Poe gave him a copy of Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, for the fly-leaf carries the inscription: “For Mr. N. Biddle, with the author's respects.” Concerning Poe's illness, see LTR-105 and LTR-107; concerning the postponement of the Penn, see the note to LTR-106. Poe corresponded with his Southern cousins in July and August of 1840 (CL-243, CL-244, LTR-97, and LTR-98), but the form and degree of their actual support is not easily determined. Poe's “equivocal errand” seems to have been to secure a subscription to the Penn. An original Prospectus of the Penn for January 1, 1841, on which is written “N. Biddle subscribed four years in advance” was formerly in the collection of Charles Biddle (and is now owned by a private collector in New York). The fact that Biddle paid his subscription “four years in advance” is of special interest. (See also LTR-316 and LTR-328 in answer to Patterson as well as various similar notes in Such Friends.) Although he may well have intended to use the money more appropriately, the poverty-stricken Poe probably relied in part on the advance payments for his proposed magazine as a means of living. In his bankruptcy papers, filed in 1842, Poe lists a $20 debt to Biddle (see the notes to LTR-135). For Poe's often manifest effort in regard to “caste,” see LTR-108 and note.

Source: photocopy of the original MS (1 p.), formerly in the collection of Charles J. Biddle, but currently unlocated. The envelope is addressed: “N. Biddle, Esqr. / No. [sic] Spruce Street/ Philadelphia” and is postmarked at Philadelphia, Jan. 6. The street number is omitted. No reply to the present letter is known. [page 256:]

Notes: The Penn did not appear as scheduled (see LTR-109 and note). David Hoffman was a partner in the Baltimore law firm of Hoffman and Dobbins (see Phillips, 1:645), and an author (see H [Works], 17:76). “Quotidiana” was an article by Snodgrass in the January 1841 SLM. George R. Graham established Graham's Magazine by merging the Casket and Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, in November 1840 (Quinn, p. 309, see also the note to LTR-104). Regarding the essay by Snodgrass, see LTR-109 and note. The failure to hear from Nathan C. Brooks may have been due to Poe's rupture with Burton, a friend of the former editor of the Baltimore American Museum, or to Brooks’ new duties as principal of the Baltimore city schools. Poe had been a contributor to Brooks’ Museum (see LTR-78 and the note to LTR-90).

Poe's favorite tittle of erudition (concerning “few and far between”) is traced to Robert Blair (1699-1746), Thomas Campbell (1777-1844), and John Norris (1657-1711) in “Pinakidia” (of August 1836, see Writings, 2:31, item 38) and in “Marginalia” M-139A, Writings, 2:239 (also mentioned by T. Gibson in “Poe at West Point,” Harper's, November 1867, 35:754). A very similar tracing by Wm. Maxwell, upon whom T. W. White counted for material, appears in the SLM of January 1837 (3:6). The reference suggests that Poe and Maxwell were relying on a common source open to both (see Jackson, Contributors and Contributions to the SLM, pp. 15 and 20; and Poe and the SLM, p. 113). Poe's logic is faulty here since a few visits within any period of time may just as easily occur at short intervals as long ones. In appearing to quote the phrase “if done, be done quickly,” Poe is coalescing Macbeth's “If it were done when 'tis done, then ‘twere well / It were done quickly” (I.vii.1-2).

The USA failure to sign the international copyright agreement was a great problem for American authors, one well understood and frequently publicized by Poe (in fifteen instances in his works). For his signing on October 18, 1843, as one of thirty-eight Associate Members, a published pamphlet titled An Address to the people of the United States in behalf of the American Copy-right Club (NY), see Pollin, “The Living Writers,” SAR 1991, pp. 168, 188-189, n. 78. Poe's spelling for the word is as a doubly capitalized compound save for the first in the five instances: LTR-92a, LTR-107 (the present letter), LTR-108, LTR-143, and LTR-172. [page 259:]

By referring to “good hands,” Poe might very well have meant his own as he authored several series of articles, small or large, in various magazines. The most prominent of these series was “Marginalia,” 297 items published in four different magazines in seventeen installments over a period of five years, and also the earlier “Pinakidia” (172 items). Smaller articles of a similar purpose are “Literary Small Talk” (7 items), “Chapter of Suggestions” (11 items), and “Fifty Suggestions.” (All five of these series are collected in full, and discussed in volume II of Writings). For a development of Poe's idea expressed in the present letter, see Poe's own introduction to the “Marginalia,” first printed in the United States Magazine and Democratic Review (November 1844, 15:484) and repeated when the series began anew in the SLM (April 1849, 15:217; Writings, 2:107-109). Both “titles” may be Poe's somewhat pretentious adaptation from Renaissance Latin plural nouns ending in “a,” first, for “daily written items,” and second, for “free or casual discourse.” This important coinage is discussed in Pollin, “Who Deserves Credit for Coining and Circulating ‘Marginalia,’ “ EAP Review, 1:90-91, indicating the error in ascribing its publication and use primarily to Coleridge.

Source: facsimile of the original MS (2 pp.) in Bixby, pp. 14-15. The original MS is now in the New York Public Library, Berg Collection. Bracketed portions of the text of the letter are from the transcript made by William Hand Browne for J. H. Ingram, emended from a collation made by Mr. Gordan. Additionally, the bracketed period on page 2 is apparently obscured on the MS by a small square of paper used to reinforce a weak spot. Although W [1909] prints the letter in full, with variations (1:267-271), he was using a copy as source (see his 1885 edition, p. 142, n.) which had undoubtedly been prepared by Spencer from Dr. Browne's transcripts of the originals (see APXA-Snodgrass). A penciled note at the end of Browne's transcript reads: “The Prospectus which follows [the one mentioned in the letter] was printed on the 3d page of this sheet. In other words, Poe took one of his prospectuses, folded it the other way, & wrote his letter.” Poe composed several letters in this way. Ingram then added the note that the prospectus was dated January 1, 1841 (University of Virginia, Ingram Collection). Actually, the letter is written on what appears to be the first leaf of the prospectus, but the two other leaves have become entirely separated and are now connected with mending tape. Snodgrass’ address is on the fourth page of the prospectus. Poe is answering a letter from Snodgrass (CL-266) which must have been written sometime before January 17, 1841. [page 260:]

Notes: Robert Taylor Conrad (1810-1858) was a prominent Philadelphian and semi-professional man of letters, writing plays and contributing regularly to the magazines of the day. He later became a judge and a mayor of Philadelphia (see American Magazines, 1:551). In 1847-1848, he assisted George Graham in editing the North American and Graham's. Poe included him in “A Chapter on Autography” (Graham's, December 1841; H [Works], 15:232-233) and in more expanded form in an article on Conrad in the June 1844 Graham's (included by Spannuth and TOM in their Doings of Gotham, pp. 93-100). During the second half of 1840, Poe frequently used the blank pages of a printed prospectus for the Penn or the Stylus for correspondence. Regarding the articles desired of Conrad, see also LTR-107 in which he suggests that Snodgrass’ friend, David Hoffman, of Baltimore, might contribute articles on the same topics. In spite of Poe's continued and ardent efforts, the Penn never became a reality. (See F. W. Thomas’ letter to Poe, March 7, 1841, CL-271: “... this past week. Dow ... told me you had given up the idea of the Penn and was [sic] engaged with Graham”; see also the note to LTR-109.)

The word “caste” has special overtones for Poe, as also in LTR-153. In the present letter, it reveals Poe's awareness of his lack of “class distinction” as might be conferred by any special profession, property, or acknowledged hereditary or social rank. (See notes to LTR-79 for a relevant comment about inaccuracies and emphases in his particularized genealogy.) Poe seems to hope to “borrow” a potential for influence from Conrad's prominence. See also in other instances, as in his “Literati” sketch of C. M. Kirkland (H [Works], 15:86), or in regard to Longfellow's play (H [Works], 13:60). See also LTR-106a, LTR-148, and LTR-225 for the same use of “caste.” Customarily, Poe writes it in italics, perhaps showing his misconception that it is basically a French term, derived from Latin “castus” or “pure.” In reality this spelling may have come into English only about 1800 (hitherto commonly spelled “cast”), but it originated, apparently, from the Spanish or Portuguese “casta.” Poe normally spelled French words in italics. The French Academy, it is true, accepted the word as French in the middle of the eighteenth century. [page 262:]

Source: photocopy of the original MS (1 p.) in the Morgan Library. The letter appears on the second leaf of the prospectus of the Penn for January 1, 1841. No reply from Conrad is known.

Notes: The essay “Poetry: the uncertainty of its appreciation,” by Snodgrass, previously submitted to Burton's for a premium, was printed in Graham's (June 1841, 13:288-289). Unlike Burton's, Graham's regularly appeared almost a month in advance of date. Within the limits given, Poe's defense of himself against accusations of drunkenness is probably based on truth. After contributing his tale “The Man of the Crowd” to the December number of Graham's, Poe joined the editorial staff in February, in time for the April issue (see American Magazines, 1:544-546). An editorial in the Saturday Evening Post, February 20, 1841, speaks of Poe's becoming one of the editors of Graham's, and in the April issue of the magazine the proprietor himself mentions having made certain arrangements with Poe, “commencing with the present number” (see Quinn, p. 310). (George Rex Graham bought and merged Atkinson's Casket with Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, see notes to LTR-104. Graham was also part owner of the Saturday Evening Post.) Poe's salary was $800, not including payments made for contributions to “the literary contents,” namely poetry and tales (see American Magazines, 1:549). Mott also points out (1:512) that Graham paid R. W. Griswold $1,000 as editor in 1842, and he offered Bayard Taylor the editorship in 1848 at the same salary. When Poe was forced to postpone the Penn due to bank suspensions, he joined Graham's in what he thought was a temporary arrangement, believing that Graham would eventually finance publication of the Penn (see LTR-113, LTR-114, LTR-115, LTR-116, and others). (For more on the economic recession which dimmed Poe's prospects for launching his own magazine at this time, see Whalen, Poe and the Masses, pp. 199 and 309, n. 10.) For more on Charles Soran's book of poetry, see LTR-120 and note. The phrase “scotched not killed” (repeated in LTR-109a) is from Macbeth. Poe used it also in “Marginalia” M-287 (see Writings, 2:413). For other Macbeth allusions, see Pollin, “Poe and Shakespeare,” SAR 1985, pp. 157-186. For Poe's literary use of April Fool's day see “Hans Pfaall,” in Writings, 1:467, and TOM [T&S], 2:204 and 3:1291.

Source: transcript of the letter as given in the Baltimore American, April 4, 1881, where it was first printed. The original MS is probably lost (see APXA-Snodgrass). Several papers, including the New York World and the New York Herald, copied the letter under a Baltimore release, but these printings have varied in some degree, either in changes in pointing or in omissions of text. According to editorial comment in the American, the italics are Poe's own. Poe is replying to Snodgrass’ letter of March 8, 1841 (CL-272), which is unlocated. [page 266:]

Notes: Professor Thomas Wyatt became associated with Poe when The Conchologist's First Book was being prepared late in 1838 or early in 1839 (see The Poe Log, p. 259). James Ackerman (born about 1813) was a lithographer in Philadelphia, and colored the plates for The Conchologist's First Book and Wyatt's A Synopsis of Natural History, the latter book being the one discussed in the present letter. He is listed in McElroy's Philadelphia Directory for 1840 as a “map colourer” (quoted in D. Thomas, Poe in Philadelphia, p. 702). Peter S. Duval was a Philadelphia lithographer, particularly well known for his scientific illustrations, including many for Silliman's American Journal of Science. John Millington (1779-1868) was a scientist and teacher. D. Thomas says that he “may be tentatively identified as the ‘Professor Millington’ “ in this letter (Poe in Philadelphia, p. 851). E. J. Pinkerton was another lithographer, appearing in McElroy's Philadelphia Directory for 1843, 1844, and 1845 (Poe in Philadelphia, p. 869). “Mr Pollack” was J. R. Pollack, a Philadelphia publisher of periodicals, who is listed in a Philadelphia directory as being at 205 Chestnut Street. In 1837, and perhaps afterwards as well, he served as a periodical agent, which would seem to make the arrangement mentioned by Poe very reasonable. “Rose” [page 268:] was Edgar's sister, Rosalie, and “John Mc. K” was John Hamilton Mackenzie, the oldest surviving son of William Mackenzie, Rosalie's adoptive father. For another use by Poe of “oars,” see LTR-82 and note. For more on “scotched not killed,” see the note to LTR-109.

Source: original MS (2 pp.) in the Humanities Research Center of the University of Texas at Austin. The envelope, a separate leaf, bears a postmark of the same date as the letter.

Notes: The present letter is the first of the two that Poe wrote to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), the other being that of June 22, 1841 (LTR- 115). (See Longfellow's letter to Griswold, September 28, 1850, in H [Works], 17:406-407, where Longfellow states that he has from Poe “... two letters ... and these are the only ones I ever received from him.”) Longfellow taught languages at Harvard, and is still remembered fondly for such poems as “Hiawatha,” “The Courtship of Miles Standish,” and “Paul Revere's Ride.” For Poe's favorable opinion of “Hymn to the Night” and “The Beleaguered City,” see his review of Voices of the Night in Burton's, February 1840 (5:100). Poe spells the French word “niäiserie” (meaning trifle or silliness) incorrectly, since his inserted dieresis overlooks the need, in French, to pronounce “ai” as a single vowel, as in “paint.” Significantly, he omits the dieresis in the ten instances of use in his critical or journalistic texts (see the notes to LTR-288). The word is a favorite Poe term of scorn, here pretended self-scorn, used now to impress the learned and successful Longfellow, whom he later derided and accused of plagiarism in a series of articles in the New-York Mirror and BJ, later referred to as “The Little Longfellow War” (see Writings, 5:25-33; and Pollin, “Longfellow and Poe,” MissQ, 38:475-482). Although Poe, in his professional capacity, often had to reluctantly seek favors from prominent literary figures, without regard to their actual talents, Graham's request, with its financial inducements, must have made Poe bristle. Longfellow's reply to the present letter declined the offer but [page 270:] added that Poe's name was known to him and that he thought highly of Poe's power, especially as a “romance-writer.”

Source: original MS (2 pp.) preserved in the Longfellow House, Cambridge, MA. The letter occupies pages 1 and 2 of a folded leaf; the address, which is on page 4, reads: “Professor H. W. Longfellow,/ Cambridge,/ Mass:.” The letter bears a Philadelphia postmark of May [11], the date being indistinct. Longfellow's reply of May 19 (CL-284) is the only known letter from Longfellow to Poe.

Notes: Rufus Wilmot Griswold (1815-1857) had been a protégé of Horace Greeley. At the time of the present letter, Griswold was about to replace Poe as an editor of Graham's Magazine, a move which would initiate much ill will between the two literary figures. (For additional information on Griswold, and his correspondence with Poe, see APXA-Griswold.) The Family Magazine (subtitled Weekly Abstract of General Knowledge) was devoted to serving its readers with “useful and entertaining knowledge.” It was a weekly founded in New York by Origen Bacheler in 1833, becoming a monthly in June 1834 and remaining so until it was suspended in May 1841 (American Magazines, 1:363-364). The journal offered a paragraph of high praise for Pym's “rare and wonderful adventures,” in its three simultaneous or interrelated printed issues: New York, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati. For the tangle of editions plus the text of its very favorable review of Pym (in 1839; 6:152) see Pollin, “Pym and the Contemporary Reviewers” (Studies in American Fiction, 2:45-46). John L. Stephens wrote several well-received scholarly [page 271:] travel books, beginning with the title “Incidents of Travel ...”; Poe reviewed his Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia Petraea, and the Holy Land (1837) in the New York Review, October 1837, and his Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan (1841) in Graham's, August 1841. Although Stephens also published Incidents of Travel in Yucatan in 1843 (see DAB, 19:579-580), the evidence so far adduced suggests the 1841 book. Poe's look at Stephens’ popular new book for an intended review in Graham's was to be delayed by the failure of the Harpers to send it quickly. Ultimately, he was obligated by necessity to base his comments on a “cursory perusal” of a friend's copy, and to fill three-fourths of the critique of this “most interesting book of travel” with material from his October 1837 review (see H [Works], 10:1-25 and 10:178-181 for later use in his 1841 text). The Harpers’ apparent refusal to send a copy to an editor suggests a deeply harbored anger with Poe over his participation in the 1839 abridgement (cheaply priced by Haswell & Barrington) of Professor Wyatt's expensive 1838 Manual of Conchology, which had been published by the Harpers. Clearly, Poe's letter is a written continuation of a request previously made in person.

Source: photocopy of the original MS (1 p.) in the Humanities Research Center of the the University of Texas at Austin. The MS is a small piece of paper torn from a larger leaf and folded twice; on the outside appears “Rev. Rufus W. Griswold,” and inside there is neither place identification nor date. Conjectural dating of the letter is based upon the following evidence. In the spring of 1841, Poe was with Graham's and Griswold with the Daily Standard, both in Philadelphia. The present letter indicates that Poe “spoke” with Griswold, and the MS shows that the letter was not mailed but delivered by hand. If we accept Griswold's statement, he first met Poe in the spring of 1841 (see “Preface” to Works, 3:xviii [1850] and 1:xxi [1853]). Probably before May 8 Griswold left Philadelphia for Boston to serve on the editorial staff of George Roberts’ Times and Notion. (See the letter from George Roberts to Griswold, April 23, 1841, MS in the Boston Public Library, sent from the office of the Times and Notion, Boston, to Griswold's office at the Standard, Philadelphia: “... I am glad that you have at length made up your mind to come with me, for I truly believe it will prove to be your own interest as well as mine ... I prefer you would commence on Saturday May 8th ...”; see also Jacob L. Neu, “Rufus Wilmot Griswold,” Studies in English, 5:113 and Bayless, p. 36.) Assuming that the dating is correct, the present letter is the earliest authentic surviving correspondence between Poe and Griswold. [page 272:]

Notes: Poe's celebrated poem “The Haunted Palace” was first published in Nathan C. Brooks’ American Museum of Science, Literature and the Arts (April 1839, 2:320), and later embodied in “The Fall of the House of Usher” in Burton's (September 1839, 5:145-152). Longfellow's poem “The Beleaguered City” appeared in the SLM (November 1839, 5:709). Poe repeated his charge of plagiarism in regard to these two poems in an [page 273:] anonymous review of Longfellow's poems in the Aristidean (April 1845, 1:130-142); TOM [Poems, 1:314] states only that Poe's claim “may be dismissed.” (See also Longfellow's letter to Griswold, September 28, 1850, H [Works], 17:406-407). The “above” refers of course to Poe's “memo,” no longer attached to the present letter. The “memo” (reprinted in H [Works], 1:344-346) is full of inaccuracies, and serves as an interesting contrast to the information given in his accounts to George and William Poe as well as that supplied for other biographical articles. Griswold's Poets and Poetry of America (April 18, 1842) included only three of Poe's poems: “The Haunted Palace,” “The Coliseum,” and “The Sleeper,” all previously published. “The Coliseum” had been submitted by Poe for the prize offered by the Baltimore Saturday Visiter in 1833 at the same time he entered his Tales of the Folio Club. His story, “MS. Found in a Bottle,” won first prize for prose, and apparently the poem would have won first prize in its class except that the judges decided not to award both prizes to the same contestant. In a speech prepared for the 1875 dedication of the Poe Monument in Baltimore, Latrobe states, “I am not prepared to say that the committee may not have been biased in awarding the fifty dollar prize to Mr. Hewitt by the fact that they had already given the one hundred dollar prize to Mr. Poe. I recollect, however, that we agreed that, under the circumstances, the excellence of Mr. Hewitt's poem deserved a reward, and we gave the smaller prize to him with clear consciences” (see Latrobe, “Reminiscences of Poe,” in S. S. Rice, Edgar Allan Poe, A Memorial Volume, p. 60).

Source: photocopy of the original MS (1 p.) in the Boston Public Library; also collated with the MS. The extra “leaf” containing Poe's poems is lost. The letter is undated; but Griswold, presumably, docketed it “March 29 / 1841,” and inked out the month in the postmark. Biographers of Poe have accepted the March date; the correct dating, however, is May 29, 1841. Poe's MS has been divided into two pieces, one of which is in the Boston Public Library, the other now on indefinite loan from the Griswold Collection to the Poe Foundation, Richmond. The portion in the Boston Public Library bears the Philadelphia postmark with the month and day inked out, and shows part of the address as: “R.W.Grisw[old] / Bo[ston].” The portion in the Poe Foundation, Poe's famous “Memo” of biographical data, shows: “[R. W. Grisw]old, Esq^re / [Bo]ston, / Mass,” with the text of the two fragmentary addresses lining up perfectly. Ultra-violet lamp, microscope, and opinion by a hand-writing expert established the month date as May 29. The joining of the two pieces of [page 274:] MS, which fit each other, gave the address of Griswold as Boston. A letter from George Roberts to Griswold, April 23, 1841 (MS in the Boston Public Library), urging Griswold to join the staff of the Times and Notion by May 8, if possible, confirmed the year date. Thus the two pieces of MS are fragments of the present letter. Poe is undoubtedly replying to a Griswold letter, datable before May 29, 1841 (CL-288). Although the requests for contributions and biographical data could have been made by Griswold prior to his leaving Philadelphia, support for the existence of a letter given in one from F. W. Thomas to Griswold, June 8, 1841 (see Some Passages in the Correspondence of Rufus W. Griswold, ed. W. M. Griswold, p. 66). For a fuller discussion of the present letter, see Ostrom, “Another Griswold Forgery in a Poe Letter,” MLN, pp. 394-396. A facsimile of the “memo” is given by Roberston, Bibliography, 2:284-285.

Notes: Adams was probably the same engraver employed by the Harpers for the fifty woodcuts of the pirated edition of Robinson Crusoe, which Poe reviewed in the January 1836 SLM (2:127-128; Writings, 5:98-99, and 102-103). As noted there (and also earlier in Topic: 30, 1976, pp. 3-22, specifically p. 14), Poe's praise of the artwork was unfounded. According to D. Thomas, “Adams” may have been “Joseph Alexander Adams, a wood engraver living in New York City” (p. 237). J. A. Adams (1803-1880) poorly copied fifty of the second-rate prints of the Englishman, William Harvey, but Poe was courting the favor of the publisher, the Harper Brothers. We might wonder about any ensuing change in the skill of Adams or about Poe's “airy” reference to an important element in his projected ideal magazine. For Poe's aims with their shifts in his plans and prospectuses see “Poe's Iron Pen” in DP, especially pp. 212-229. See LTR-114 (to J. P. Kennedy), LTR-115 (to Longfellow), LTR-116 (to F. Halleck), LTR-117a (to J. F. Cooper) for items similar to the present one. Letters to Wm. C. Bryant (CL-299), J. K. Paulding (CL-301), and N. P. Willis (CL-302), also presumably written, are unlocated. Irving's memo on the present cover is the only known indication of a reply to Poe's letters to these correspondents. [page 277:]

Source: color photograph of the original MS (2 pp.) in the University of Virginia Library, Clifton Waller Barrett Collection. The letter is addressed to “Washington Irving Esq^r / Tarrytown / N.Y.” and bears the postmark: “Philadelphia / Jun 21.” On the outside cover presumably in Irving's hand is: “Edgar A Poe / June 21 [... illegible] / answd June 24th.”

Notes: In his letter to Cooke, September 21, 1839 (LTR-82), Poe said, “As soon as Fate allows I will have a Magazine of my own”; but his dream of the ideal journal was never fulfilled, though on at least three occasions he seemed to be in sight of his goal (see LTR-153 and LTR-211, and notes). With the present letter, compare Poe's hopes and plans for the Stylus, as the Penn came to be called, in LTR-185 and LTR-186. Whatever promises Graham may have made, he never actively participated with Poe in the establishment of a magazine. Ironically, this [page 280:] string of appeals to America's major writers (LTR-113, LTR-115, LTR-116, LTR-117a) ill accords with his Prospectus, under both names of Penn and Stylus. In the fifth paragraph (even after changes, up to 1848) Poe deprecates “the mere prestige of celebrated names” although his reliance upon “the true intellect of the land” in 1843 later becomes “the true talent.” For the first Prospectus, see DP, pp. 218-221; for that of 1848 see the facsimile in Robertson, Commentary on the Bibliography of EAP, p. 277 facing page. For his prospectus of the Penn, printed in the Philadelphia Saturday Courier, June 13, 1840, see Quinn, pp. 306-308. For more on Adams, see the note to LTR-113.

Source: photocopy of the original MS (3 pp.) in the Peabody Institute Library. The letter is not fully dated, but the cover carries a Philadelphia postmark of June 21, and a Baltimore mark (it was forwarded to Washington) of June 22; moreover, Poe told F. W. Thomas, July 4, 1841 (LTR-118), that he had written to Kennedy “about ten days ago.” No reply from Kennedy is known.

Notes: Compare the present letter with LTR-113 and LTR-114, and subsequent similar items, and the respective notes. In Poe's list of those with whom arrangements were planned, Kennedy's name probably should have replaced the repetition of Paulding's. The basic ideas and even language of most of the second paragraph are used and developed by Poe in 1845 and 1846 in four major journals (see “Marginalia” M-143 and M-182, with detailed notes, in Writings, 2:248 and 2:308-309). The comparison of paper to be used — with Hyperion serving as a substitute for the North American Review in the letter sent to non-New Englanders — is potentially deprecatory of Longfellow, who was always careful in the production of his books, and shows another example of a not uncommon fault in Poe's sense of propriety. To ask so eminent a figure as Longfellow to help foster a publication produced more attractively and expensively than his own reveals a bit of competitive bragging and unintentionally encourages a negative response. Even more improbable is the suggestion that the most sought-after writer in America should lock himself into a year of publication only in the pages of a brand-new and unproven journal. One wonders what image of self as seen by others was basic to the imaginative Poe or at least prevalent in his periods of intense eagerness and ambition.

Source: original MS (2 pp.) preserved in the Longfellow House, Cambridge, MA. The letter is addressed to “Professor H. W. Longfellow / Cambridge / Mass:.” The letter is postmarked from Philadelphia, June 22. Poe is replying to Longfellow's letter of May 19, 1841 (see CL-284 and the note to LTR-110). [page 283:]

Notes: Compare the present item with LTR-113, LTR-114, and subsequent letters written for a similar purpose. In the letters prior to LTR-115, Poe uses the North American Review as the design standard against which his magazine would be measured. Writing to Longfellow, Poe substituted the Arcturus, and in the present letter, and LTR-117a, he uses both. Poe's bias against the influential and long-lived Boston North American Review is voiced in the 1843 prospectus for the Stylus, and in numerous “Marginalia” entries: M-182, M-206, M-211, M-212, M-290 (see volume II of Writings, with notes).

Source: photocopy of the original MS (2 pp.) in the Huntington Library. The first page of the MS is badly faded.

Notes: In 1841, William Darrah Kelley (1814-1890) had recently returned to Philadelphia, where he began to practice law. He served one term as the Pennsylvania Attorney General, later sitting as a judge in Philadelphia and eventually being elected to Congress. In 1854, he became an ardent abolitionist. The present letter is the only documented connection between Kelley and Poe, and is itself currently known exclusively from a contemporary entry in the diary of Isaac Mickle (1822-1855). Quoting only these two brief fragments, Mickle describes the letter as “concerning Brownson's Review, and I find from its contents that Mr. Poe is a transcendentalist of the most ultra stamp.” Orestes Augustus Brownson (1803-1876) established and edited the Boston Quarterly Review in 1838; Brownson was also the chief contributor to his magazine. This journal ran for five years, after which it was absorbed into the US Magazine and Democratic Review. Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, Brownson is mentioned in “A Chapter on Autography,” where Poe tempers his praise for Brownson's novel Charles Elwood, or the Infidel Converted by stating: “However well a man may reason on the great topics of God and immortality, he will be forced to admit tacitly in the end, that God and immortality are things to be felt, rather than demonstrated” (Graham's, November 1841). There is a also brief allusion to Brownson in the [page 286:] opening paragraph of “X-ing a Paragrab” (TOM [T&S], 3:1369 and 1375, n. 4), and both the author and his novel are again mentioned in “Mesmeric Revelation” (1844). Given nothing more than Mickle's few hints as to the content of the letter, one may speculate that Poe was probably responding to something Kelley wrote in regard to Poe's review of Macaulay. In this unsigned review, Poe gave particular attention to Macaulay's use of logic on religious matters, stating: “Were the indications we derive from science, of the nature and designs of Deity, and thence, by inference, of man's destiny — were these indications proof direct, no advance in science would strengthen them — for, as our author truly observes, ‘nothing could be added to the force of the argument which the mind finds in every beast, bird, or flower’ but as these indications are rigidly analogical, every step in human knowledge — every astronomical discovery, for instance — throws additional light upon the august subject, by extending the range of analogy. That we know no more to-day of the nature of Deity — of its purposes — and thus of man himself — than we did even a dozen years ago — is a proposition disgracefully absurd; and of this any astronomer could assure Mr. Macaulay. Indeed, to our own mind, the only irrefutable argument in support of the soul's immortality — or, rather, the only conclusive proof of man's alternate dissolution and re-juvenescence ad infinitum — is to be found in analogies deduced from the modern established theory of the nebular cosmogony” (Graham's, June 1841, 18:295). Taking these comments as a sign of a possible ally, Kelley may have asked the editor of Graham's if he was familiar with Brownson and his magazine. In speaking of Kelley, Mickle notes: “In religion and politics he is too wild, radical, and theoretical” (1:168). In other diary entries, Mickle clearly establishes Kelley as an enthusiastic Transcendentalist, describing personal pilgrimages made before 1846 to visit Brownson (2:394) and Emerson (2:353). For a more accurate account of Poe's less than favorable view of the Transcendentalists, see LTR-180 (and notes) and the postscript to LTR-195.

Source: fragments as quoted in A Gentleman of Much Promise: The Diary of Isaac Mickle, ed. Philip English Mackey, 1:185. Poe is probably replying to a letter from Kelley (CL-289a), written to Poe as editor and responding to Poe's unsigned review of Macaulay in the June 1841 issue of Graham's Magazine. Since Graham's was typically issued a few weeks before the designated month, a date of ca. late May 1841 will serve as an estimated date. Mickle implies that Kelley received the letter from Poe on June 25, 1841. [page 287:]

Notes: The July 1841 number of Graham's (19:38) carried Thomas’ poem, “The Meeting of the Lovers.” Strictly speaking, Poe's residence in Richmond ended in March of 1827, though he may have considered himself a kind of displaced resident until John Allan's death in March 1834. Thomas’ letter to Poe, July 1 (CL-303), advised him to get in touch with J. P. Kennedy, who might provide further aid in getting a government clerkship. For Jesse E. Dow, who at one time edited the Index (Alexandria, VA) and the Daily Madisonian (Washington), see Poe's “A Chapter on Autography” (Graham's, December 1841; H [Works], 15:228). See also the note to LTR-197 for Thomas’ remarks on Poe's letter. Poe treated Joseph Holt Ingraham (1809-1860) in “A Chapter on Autography” (Graham's, November 1841; H [Works], 15:188), and reviewed Ingraham's Southwest in the SLM (January 1836, 2:122-123; reprinted in Writings, 5:92-94). In Graham's for June 1841 (18:296) is a four-sentence review of The Quadroone, unsigned but obviously by Poe. Although the reviewer claims “high personal respect” for Ingraham, he says the author should be “ashamed” of this “very bad book.” It is curious to see Poe naively expressing dismay in the present letter at Ingraham's response to this bluntness, as though unaware of “the power of words,” even harsh words so forcefully delivered. Poe's interest in the clerkship reveals his growing awareness of the demands of being an editor, a position which left little time to focus on his own creative writing.

Source: photocopy of the original MS (2 pp.) in the New York Public Library, Manuscript Division. The postscript is very faded. This is Poe's first extant letter to Thomas since that of November 23, 1840 (LTR-104), [page 289:] though he wrote at least four in the interim (see APXA-Thomas). The first, April 1, 1841 (CL-276), concerned Thomas’ request that Poe arrange for the periodical publication of a proposed novel, and the failure of such arrangements (see Thomas to Poe, May 11, 1841, CL-283). The second, May 26, 1841 (CL-286), enclosed a draft due Thomas from Graham, requested in Thomas’ letter of May 20 (CL-285), and acknowledged as received in Thomas to Poe, May 29 (CL-287), though Thomas’ letter should be dated May 28, since it was postmarked May 28 and speaks of “Yours of the 26” as received “yesterday.” A third, ca. May 29-June 7 (CL-290), stated that Griswold was desirous of biographical sketches of Pinckney of Baltimore and Amelia of Kentucky (see Thomas to Griswold, June 8, 1841, in Some Passages in the Correspondence of Rufus W. Griswold, ed. W. M. Griswold, p. 66: “My, friend Edgar A. Poe ... wrote me the other day ...”). This third letter must follow the one from Griswold to Poe, before May 29, 1841 (CL-288, see the note to LTR-112), for Thomas’ letter of May 29 [28] makes no allusion to the Griswold request. A fourth letter, June 11-12 (CL-291) was received by Thomas, June 13 (see Thomas to Poe, June 14, 1841, CL-292).

Notes: This is another of Poe's series of very similar letters written to prominent literary figures, soliciting contributions for his proposed Penn Magazine (see LTR-113, etc.). Curious is Poe's appeal to Cooper, whose works he typically reviewed less than favorably (see the note to LTR-66). Although Poe had previously written to Cooper while editor of the SLM (LTR-66), that was presumably at the instigation of T. W. White. In the present letter, Poe is pursuing his own interests. Apparently, in his desperation to secure some financial success for his venture, Poe is willing to compromise his own sense of taste and demand for quality. It is also possible that Poe has succumbed to some influence from George R. Graham. As Poe's partner in the proposed venture, Graham may have insisted on securing at least one well-known name as a contributor.

Source: transcript as given by D. Thomas, Poe In Philadelphia, pp. 234-235. The MS letter is unlocated, but it was first printed in Henkels’ catalog no. 698, March 21-22, 1893 (Joseph Henry Dubbs sale), pp. 152-153, where the text is quoted in full. Based on similar letters, a more precise date might be June 22-24, 1841, but in the absence of the MS the present dating has been left to stand. [page 292:]

Notes: Thomas’ letter of July 1 (CL-303) suggested that Poe enlist the aid of J. P. Kennedy in getting a government clerkship, but as Poe notes, he had just written Kennedy on June 21, 1841 (LTR-114) in regard to the Penn. On August 30, 1840 (CL-323), Thomas wrote Poe that “I saw Kennedy and ... he expressed his willingness to aid you in any way in his power.” For Kennedy's friendship with Poe, see LTR-50 and APXA-Kennedy. Thomas’ letter of July 6 (CL-305), with Frailey's acknow-ledgment of Poe's solution, was published in Graham's (August 1841, 19:96; reprinted in H [Works], 14:133-137). In the same issue appears the cipher, along with a challenge to any reader to solve it, the reward being a one-year subscription to Graham's and the Saturday Evening Post. In Graham's, October 1841, Poe printed the solution of the cipher, after saying that it had “not yet been read by any of our innumerable readers.” Dr. Charles S. Frailey, identified by Thomas only as “a friend,” was a Freemason, eventually serving as Grand Master of the Lodge of Washington, DC.

Poe's widely publicized career as a surprisingly accomplished solver of cryptograms began with his issuance of a challenge to all readers, in the December 18, 1839 number of Alexander's Weekly Messenger, a Philadelphia newspaper. He said, in part, “... we pledge ourselves to read it [a cipher] forthwith — however unusual or arbitrary may be the characters employed.” Between December 18, 1839 and May 6, 1840, thirty-six ciphers were announced as received, most of which he solved. (For a full discussion of the material, with reprints of the original articles, see Clarence S. Brigham, “Edgar Allan Poe's Contributions to Alexander's Weekly Messenger,” in Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 52:45-125, and especially a letter from W. K. Wimsatt quoted by Brigham, 52:48-50). Poe renewed his articles and challenges on secret writing in Graham's for July, continuing the series in August, October, and December 1841 (reprinted in H [Works], 14:114-149). The subject is also treated in a score of the letters in the Poe correspondence (see, for example, LTR-130, LTR-162, LTR-198, and LTR-222). Poe had reviewed and was to use extensively Robert Walsh's chapter on Antoine Pierre Berryer, high official and cipher expert, in his Sketches of Conspicuous Living Characters of France, a translation of Loménie's Galerie Populaire des Contemporains (see DP for seven instances, and especially Writings, 2:251). [page 295:]

Poe erroneously writes the word “villatin,” with an “n,” although it requires a “c” as shown by the first sentence, with reference to “a rustic.” Coming from “villaticus” or referring to a rural place, a farmstead, the word is still current. In the paragraph shown in Dr. Frailey's “solution” in “Secret Writing,” (Graham's, October 1841, 19:192), it is printed “villatic,” corrected by the typesetter or by Poe himself later. Note also Poe's error in Frailey's name, which is given correctly in the magazine (and in LTR-130). Varied in the magazine extract text are also “we subjected” for “I ...” and “facts without ...” for “facts. Without ....”

Source: photocopy of the original MS (2 pp.) in the Humanities Research Center of the University of Texas at Austin. The second leaf, including page 3 and the address, is still unlocated. The letter, excluding the sentence on page 3, was written on both sides of a single sheet; the last sentence and the address were probably on a second sheet. The letter was first printed in Stoddard, “Memoir,” Select Works of EAP, pp. xciv-xcvi. Page 3 of the letter does not appear in the photocopy used for the present text, but the sentence is printed by Stoddard and is given in Thomas’ letter to Poe, July 7, 1841 (CL-309). The envelope is postmarked July 5, and carries Thomas’ note: “Received July 6^th / Answered 7^th.” Poe is replying to Thomas’ letter of July 1 (CL-303).

Notes: Using the pseudonym William Landor, Horace Binney Wallace (1817-1852) wrote “Sweepings from a Drawer,” published in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine (November 1839, 5:236). Poe wrote a favorable comment on Landor in “A Chapter on Autography” a few months after the present letter, describing him as “an elaborately careful, stiff, and pedantic writer, with much affectation and great talent,” noting also, “Should he devote himself ultimately to letters, he cannot fail of high success” (Graham's, November 1841, 19:231). Wallace later wrote a biography of N. P. Willis (see LTR-173; see also the note by Spannuth and TOM in Doings of Gotham, p. 71, and Poe's reference in Letter VI). Of particular interest in the present letter is Poe's convenient identification of the authorship of the critical notices in Graham's, vol. XIX (July 1841).

Source: photocopy of the original MS (1 p.), formerly in the collection of William H. Koester, and now in the Humanities Research Center of the University of Texas at Austin. The separate address leaf is directed to William Landor, Philadelphia, with Poe apparently unaware that the name is a pseudonym. Poe is replying to two notes from Wallace, presumably as Landor (CL-306 and CL-307). No further correspondence between Poe and Wallace is known.

Notes: Snodgrass’ poem, “Reproof of a Bird,” appeared in Graham's, September 1841 (19:103). The “elision” for which Poe apologizes undoubtedly occurred in Snodgrass’ article on poetry, in the June issue of Graham's (18:288-289); and the reference to “a small for a capital R in Rosinante” has to do with Poe's review of The Quacks of Helicon, by L. A. Wilmer, in the August number (19:90-93). The review returned by Poe could only have been for The Patapsco and Other Poems (Baltimore: F. Lucas, 1841; 103 p., with a 2nd ed. of 1842, differently paged, and three versions more of the 2nd ed. by 1858). The author, Charles Soran (1809-1857), was a minor Baltimore poet. Poe requested a notice of his poems in LTR-109; Snodgrass’ notice of Soran's poems, however, came too late, Poe having indicated the June number. T. S. Arthur owned and edited the Baltimore Monument, October 1836-October 1839 (American Magazines, 1:381), was in Philadelphia by 1841, and gained his greatest journalistic fame as editor of Leslie's (February 1844-July 1846) and of his own Arthur's Home Magazine, from 1853. McJilton, also an editor of the Monument, was one of the literary group during Poe's stay in Baltimore; other members included Wm. H. Carpenter, N. C. Brooks, John Hewitt, and Rufus Dawes. TOM [Iowa] and Hull attribute to Poe a brief but generally unfavorable notice in Graham's (May 1841, 18:251) of [page 299:] McJilton's “The Sovereignty of Mind, A Poem delivered before the Philomathaean [sic] Society of Pennsylvania College.” (This notice states: “Mr. McJilton is a gentleman for whose talents we have much respect — far more than for his performances. Indeed, while there is indication of genius in almost every thing he writes, he has yet written very little worth reading. We remember a short poem from his pen, first published in the ‘Casket’ and entitled ‘Serenade,’ which was truly beautiful — but beyond this we can call to mind none of his compositions which, as a whole, are even tolerable. There are always fine imaginative passages: — but their merit is scarcely discernible through the clouds of verbiage, false imagery, bad grammar, and worse versification in which they are enveloped. [new paragraph] We are grieved to see Mr. McJilton occupied in ‘delivering’ poems to order before Philomathoean [sic] societies. It is a business in which no man of talent should be employed — in which no man of genius could hope to succeed. As for The ‘Sovereignty of Mind’ it is a hackneyed manner. It has some glowing paragraphs — but abounds in all the worst faults of the author. We do not feel justified in speaking of it at greater length.” For the proper spelling of the name of this literary society, see the note to LTR-96a.) Willis Gaylord Clark edited the Philadelphia Gazette; he had just died, and Graham's (August 1841, 19:85) carried an obituary. “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” had appeared in Graham's for April, and “A Descent into the Maelström” in the May number. The “paper” in the August issue was “The Colloquy of Monos and Una.” Poe's review of Wilmer's The Quacks of Helicon incorporated portions of his earlier article on “American Novel Writing,” written for the Pittsburgh Literary Examiner, August 1839 number (see the notes to LTR-81). Poe's article on the novel was run editorially by Fisher in the August 1839 issue, which was not quite the last “kick” of the magazine. For Poe's letter to Kennedy, directed to Baltimore but forwarded to Washington, see LTR-114.

The compound “fire-&-fury” seems to occur in neither the OED nor in phrase lists; it is “cognate” in a sense with his “fire and fury” in the 1838 “Psyche Zenobia” (TOM [T&S], 2:339). The word “humbuggery” is given in a somewhat obscure work of 1831, probably unseen by Poe, and next in 1892; it is a virtual coinage by Poe who used it also in Letter III, in Doings of Gotham (June 1, 1844; Spannuth and TOM, pp. 39-43).

Source: photocopy of the original MS (2 pp.) in the Morgan Library. The letter was first printed in full in W [1909] 1:283-285 (but “of Soran” is omitted in the first sentence of paragraph five). The letter is postmarked [page 300:] “July 12.” Poe is replying to Snodgrass’ letter of July 10, 1841 (CL-310), which is unlocated, the first since March 8 (CL-272).

Notes: On August 10, 1840, someone from Baltimore sent Poe two ciphers for solution (CL-316). The writer used the name “Timotheus Whackemwell,” an obvious pseudonym. Poe, believing he had identified “Whackemwell,” sent the present letter in reply to John N. McJilton, an acquaintance living in Baltimore (see LTR-133). McJilton, on August 13 (CL-319), wrote disclaiming the identity. McJilton's terse reply has neither heading nor salutation, and is signed only “J. N. M.” It reads: “This is certainly intended for some one else. I know nothing of the matter whatever, nor should I be able to tell how the thing happened, but having seen the piece headed secret-writing pub^d in Graham's Mag. noticed somewhere I suppose some wag has addressed you anonymously whom you have mistaken for me.” In his review of Walsh's translation, [page 301:] Sketches of Conspicuous Living Characters in France, in Graham's (April 1841, 18:202-203), Poe had offered to solve any cryptograms submitted; in “A Few Words on Secret Writing,” in Graham's (July 1841, 19:33-38), Poe stated that only “S. D. L.” had answered his challenge. In the October number of Graham's (19:192), Poe admitted that McJilton did not write the “Whackemwell” letter; he gives the reading for the cipher, but not the original cipher. The true identity of Whackemwell has still not been determined.

Source: photocopy of the original MS (1 p.) in the Boston Public Library. Poe's letter to McJilton must have had an outside leaf with McJilton's Baltimore address and the postal cancellation, for they are missing; McJilton, in replying on August 13, penned his remarks at the foot of Poe's letter to him, and wrote Poe's address on the back of Poe's original letter; the Baltimore cancellation is also there. The MS is torn at the right; the bracketed emendation of “infinitely” is warranted by “i ... f ... tely” with three dots as if for letter “i” being quite clear; “exc ...” is clear.

Notes: The “later pieces,” those published or at least written by the date of the present letter, were probably: “The Business Man,” in Burton's (February 1840, 6:87-89); “The Man of the Crowd,” in Graham's (December 1840, 17:267-270); “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” in Graham's (April 1841, 18:166-179); “A Descent into the Maelström,” Graham's (May 1841, 18:235-241); “The Island of the Fay,” Graham's (June 1841, 18:253-255); “The Colloquy of Monos and Una,” Graham's (August 1841, 19:52-55); “Never Bet the Devil Your Head,” Graham's (September 1841, 19:124-127); “Eleonora,” in The Gift for 1842, and in the Boston Notion (September 4, 1841). Lea & Blanchard had published Poe's Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in an edition of 750 copies (see notes to LTR-87). On August 16, 1841, the publishers gave Poe an “early reply,” declining his suggestion for a new and larger collection, and adding that they had not yet “got through the edition of the other work” (CL-321). Poe would resume his efforts with Phantasy Pieces, a heavily revised version of Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque. (Since the handwritten table of contents of Phantasy Pieces includes “The Pit and the Pendulum” and “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt,” it must date from 1842.) In 1843, Poe did manage to get “Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Man that was Used Up” printed by William Graham, G. R. Graham's brother, as The Prose Romances of Edgar A. Poe. In 1867, nearly two decades after Poe's death, W. J. Widdleton, perhaps encouraged by sales of the separate edition of Poe's poems, published two volumes of The Prose Tales of EAP, reprinted as late as 1880 (and reissued as three volumes in 1889 and 1893 by A. C. Armstrong).

Source: photocopy of the original MS (1 p.), formerly in the Drexel Institute, and now in the Humanities Research Center of the University of Texas at Austin. In the upper left corner of the MS, probably in Lea's hand, is the notation: “Rc’ Aug 14 / An^d 16.” The address leaf is lost. [page 303:]

Notes: The Reverend Horatio Hastings Weld (1811-1888) was a minor New York literary figure. Besides having written Corrected Proofs [page 304:] (Boston, 1837), and being a regular contributor to the “mammoth” publications like Brother Jonathan, he was editor, at the time of the present letter, of the Dollar Magazine, a monthly edition containing the same type of material as that in the Brother Jonathan and published by the same people (see American Magazines, 1:359-360). Poe included Weld in “A Chapter on Autography,” Graham's, December 1841 (H [Works], 15:229). The article also featured autographs of Sprague, Hoffman, Dawes, Emerson, Whittier, and Locke; but whether Weld provided the signatures is unknown. A few weeks after the present letter, Brother Jonathan prominently reprinted, on its front page, “Never Bet Your Head: A Moral Tale” (September 4, 1841), the only work by Poe to appear in that periodical. It was copied from the September issue of Graham's, and repeated in the September 7, 1841 issue of Jonathan's Miscellany, a smaller edition of its mammoth-sized cousin. The “weekly paper” was the Saturday Evening Post, and the “proprietor” was G. R. Graham.

Source: transcript as first printed in the Dial (January 16, 1908), 44:32-33, from the MS owned by Weld's daughter, Mrs. A. H. Heulings. The present location of the MS is unknown. According to the Dial the MS was a single sheet. No reply from Weld is known.

Notes: The note from Griswold to Poe (CL-324) is unlocated. Thomas’ autobiographical data, intended for Griswold's The Poets and Poetry of America, may be reasonably dated September 3, 1841 (CL-326). In a prefatory note (omitted by Harrison), Thomas acknowledges the present letter: “Yours of yesterday came to hand duly — about the time you were writing me, I was writting [sic] you [August 30].” Ultimately, Thomas warranted only one poem and a small footnote in the anthology (p. 447). For what was to be a meager headnote to a book already “in press,” the particulars Poe is requesting seem superfluous as well as unduly prying (unpublished writings, “cause of ... lameness,” “late lectures,” etc.). Thomas’ ample and specific reply shows no resentment and a very gracious personality, a sound basis for his true and enduring friendship with Poe. For Jesse E. Dow see The Poe Log, pp. xxii-xxiii; also, D. Thomas, Poe in Philadelphia, p. 37, and chiefly pp. 745-747. [page 306:]

Source: color photograph of the original MS (1 p.) in the University of Virginia Library, Clifton Waller Barrett Collection. The letter is postmarked “Philadelphia, Pa., Sep 1,” and is addressed to: “F. W. Thomas Esq^r / Washington / D. C.” Across the end Thomas wrote: “Received the 2^d 1841.” Since Poe's last extant letter to Thomas, seven letters passed between them: six from Thomas, one from Poe (see APXA-Thomas): Thomas’ letter of July 6 (CL-305), of July 7 (CL-309), Poe's letter of July 17-18 (CL-313), implied in Thomas’ second of two letters, July 19 (CL-314), Thomas’ letter of late July-early August (CL-315), and Thomas’ letter of August 30 (CL-323).

Notes: Shortly after the present letter, Poe would briefly treat Lewis J. Cist, of Cincinnati, in the second installment of his “A Chapter on Autography” (Graham's, December 1841; H [Works], 15:240). There, he noted that Cist: “has not written much prose, and is known especially by his poetical compositions, many of which have been very popular,” adding the criticism that “they are at times disfigured by false metaphor, and by a meretricious straining after effect” (19:284). The latter comment may seem odd given Poe's emphasis on the preeminent importance of effect in poetry and prose in his essay “The Philosophy of Composition” (Graham's, April 1846, 28:163-167; reprinted in H [Works], 14:193-208). What Poe may be pointing out, however, is not that Cist strives for an effect, but that he does so in a way which is clumsy, too heavy-handed, or obvious. For more on Cist, see the note to LTR-105. For Poe's temporarily abandoning the Penn project and affiliating himself with Graham, see LTR-109, postscript and note. Charles J. Peterson was an editor of Graham's. Poe printed his “Ballad” (later “Bridal Ballad”) in the SLM (January 1837, 3:5; see TOM [Poems], 1:307), and it was reprinted in the Saturday Evening Post, July 31, 1841. Following W [1909], 2:415, Campbell felt that the poem was a revision of the “Ballad,” written in a Scottish dialect and printed in the August 1835 issue of SLM (1:705-706), but TOM [Poems, 1:506] rejects this earlier poem, noting: “that Poe composed the dialect piece is wholly unacceptable.”

Poe mistakenly believed that “contre-temps,” a basically French word (although by then Englished), needs italics and also a hyphen, even when not broken across lines. He was unaware that a hyphen shifts the word (according to Robert's authoritative French-language dictionary) as a normal compound, used for an inopportune event, sometimes a disagreement, into the realm of music, to mean an appoggiatura. In LTR-126, he uses the word “in English” (that is, without italics), but still with the hyphen. See LTR-193b of 1845 for contretemps, and again in LTR-263 of 1848, without italics.

Source: photocopy of the original MS (2 pp.), formerly in the collection of William H. Koester, and now in the Humanities Research Center of the University of Texas at Austin. The address appears on a separate leaf. It bears the endorsement, presumably by Cist: “Edgar A. Poe. Philadelphia, Sept^r, 18. 1841,” and “R. Sep 26,” the latter date possibly documenting an otherwise unknown response from Cist (CL-332b). Poe is replying to Cist's letter of August 30, 1841 (CL-322). In the MS letter, the word “written” is broken across pages 1 and 2 as “writ-ten.” [page 309:]

Notes: Snodgrass’ poem appeared in Godey's Lady's Book (September 1841, 23:137) as “A Bird's Reproof,” and as “Reproof of a Bird” in Graham's Magazine (September 1841, 19:103). Although under slightly different titles, the two printings of the poem give essentially the same [page 310:] text, except for small variations in wording and punctuation, and an extra stanza in the Graham's printing. After receiving the MS, Godey probably delayed printing, and Snodgrass then submitted a revision to Graham's, both magazines coincidentally printing the poem in the same month. The Dial, a quarterly published between July 1840, and April 1844, was at this time edited by Margaret Fuller (see American Magazines,1:702), against whom Poe later aimed several sharp criticisms. Poe's “slaps” apparently were contained in his humorous tale “Never Bet Your Head,” in Graham's, (September 1841, 19:124-127; see TOM [T&S], 2:619-620). Mott (American Magazines, 1:606) gives “L. G. Clark (?)” as the publisher of the Knickerbocker for 1840-1841; but if Poe is here correct, Mott's question concerning Clark's publishing of the magazine is answered. Clark became editor of the Knickerbocker in April 1834, and remained in that position until 1859. W. Gaylord Clark, brother of Lewis, had been editor of the Philadelphia Gazette until his death, June 13, 1841; Graham's carried a eulogy in its August 1841 issue. Snodgrass may have been editor of the Baltimore Saturday Visiter at this time (see LTR-90 and note), and Poe may have meant him as the “publisher or gentleman of moderate capital.”

Although the MS correctly gives the name of the new publisher as “Broaders,” William Hand Browne transcribed “Broadus.” Otis, Broaders & Co. was a Boston bookseller, but also printed a number of books with which Poe was undoubtedly familiar, including Lydia M. Child's Philothea: A Romance (1836), Poems by Oliver W. Holmes (1836), Jane Ermina Locke's Miscellaneous Poems (1842), and George Hill's The Ruins of Athens (1842), the last title being briefly noticed inside the rear cover of the February 1842 issue of Graham's, possibly by Poe himself (see Hull, p. 363-364). Their most famous printing is probably Alexander Wilson's nine-volume American Ornithology, a reprint of the 1829 edition. One of the co-founders of the company, James Alleyne Gardner Otis (see Wm. A. Otis, A Memoir of the Otis Family, Winnetka, IL, 1924) was a relative of James F. Otis, whom Poe mentioned in “A Chapter on Autography” (Graham's, December 1841), and with whom Poe exchanged a set of letters in 1836 (see CL-149a and CL-149b). For another use of “contre-temps,” which should not be hyphenated, see LTR-125 and note.

Source: photograph of the original MS (1 p.) in the Huntington Library. The location of Snodgrass’ letter to Poe, September 6, 1841 (CL-327), is unknown. [page 311:]

Notes: Thomas sent his song on Sept. 27 (CL-332c). Poe took it to Willig (see LTR-127), and procured a copy presumably on November 11, the day after Thomas’ letter of November 10 (CL-343); he then sent copies to Thomas (see LTR-131). Jesse E. Dow was a mutual friend, publisher of the Alexandria Index (see Thomas to Poe, October 14, 1841, CL-333). At the time of the present letter, Poe was working on his “Autography” articles (see Graham's, November and December, 1841, and January, 1842); both Thomas and Dow were included in the December chapter. Thomas was apparently unsuccessful in obtaining the desired signatures. Mrs. Amelia Welby, chiefly of Louisville, was a favorite “poetess” to Poe and is discussed in the long December 1844 “Marginalia” M-104 (see Writings, 2:203-209). Concerning Poe's favoring “Amelia,” see Pollin, “The Living Writers,” SAR 1991, p. 195, n. 117. Dr. Daniel Drake (1785-1854) was a medical author; his brother, Benjamin, died on April 1, 1846. George Denison Prentice (1802-1878) was editor of the Louisville Daily Journal and a minor poet. He sharply derided Poe for attacking Thomas Carlyle, in a full statement given by the December 1843 Knickerbocker of New York, and again, for Poe's attempted “hoax” [page 312:] at the Boston Lyceum reading, as quoted by the Boston Transcript of November 13, 1845 (see The Poe Log, pp. 438, 590). Poe's request to Thomas for the autograph is cancelled in LTR-131 of November 26, 1841 (see SAR 1991, p. 195, n. 117, paragraphs 1 and 4).

Source: photocopy of the original MS (1 p.) in the Humanities Research Center of the University of Texas at Austin. It is written on a double sheet of ruled paper. The address, on a separate leaf, reads: “F. W. Thomas Esq^r / Washington / D. C.” and the postmark: “Philadelphia, Sep. 24.” Thomas’ endorsement reads: “Received 25 Sept / and answered 27th.” Below the endorsement appears the following notation: “Bolingbroke / Nelson / Shafbury [sic] / Peterborough / Wrote to Shreve and / Prentice — 12 October — “. The lower left corner of the cover carries the initials by Poe: “E A P.”

Notes: The MS Poe took to Willig was for Thomas’ song “Oh! Blame Her Not,” described as a “Ballad,” with music by Henry M. T. Powell, and copyrighted by George Willig of Philadelphia on November 2, 1841. Judge Nathaniel Beverley Tucker was indeed the author of the Partisan Leader (1836), reviewed (unsigned) by Judge Abel Parker Upshur in the [page 314:] SLM (January 1837, 3:73-89), according to B. B. Minor in SLM, 1834-1864, p. 63. (For more information on Tucker, see notes to LTR-52.) Since both author Tucker and reviewer Upshur tried to conceal their link to the Partisan Leader, the first secessionist novel, Poe is either designedly prevaricating, ignoring the evident repetition of basic themes and rhetoric in both Tucker's Paulding review and novel (see notes to LTR-62), or entirely absenting himself from a heated North-South controversy about which a diplomatic silence would be best. Thomas has clearly quizzed him pointedly about the book in his letter of October 14, 1841 (CL-333). For this issue, including Poe's knowledge of their authorships, see Whalen, Poe and the Masses, pp. 126-128 and 295, nn. 14-17. D. Thomas, in Poe in Philadelphia, pp. 924-925, regards Poe's praise of Upshur, just appointed Tyler's Secretary of the Navy, as patently motivated by his own aim at a government post. For a summarizing view of Poe on the subject of phrenologists, with references, see Writings, 5:148; after 1845 he became derisive about the theory. (See E. Hungerford, “Poe and Phrenology,” American Literature, 2:209-231; and M. Stern, “Poe: ‘The Mental Temperament’ for Phrenologists,” American Literature, 40:155-163.) Surely Poe must have received or at least seen Dow's review in the Index of the November issue of Graham's, lauding his “Autography” and decoding skill and encouraging the issuance of the Penn (see the text in The Poe Log, pp. 346-347). Poe's article on Thomas in “A Chapter on Autography” (Graham's, December 1841) is reprinted in H [Works], 15:209-210. By “Griswold's book,” Poe probably refers to Griswold's Poets and Poetry of America, published in April 1842 and including Thomas’ “ ‘Tis Said that Absence Conquers Love” (p. 447). Poe apparently wrote a sketch of Thomas, but Griswold did not use it (see LTR-124 and LTR-143). William Gilmore Simms was a prolific novelist, several times reviewed by Poe. A brief summary of Poe's relationship with Simms, see The Poe Log, p. xlii. Poe inscribed him in Such Friends as no. 231, with the task “get sonnet” (pp. 18 and 35). The new book mentioned by Poe in the present letter is probably Simm's Confession; or the Blind Heart, A Domestic Story (Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard, 1841), reviewed by Poe in Graham's (December 1841, 19:306).

Source: transcript as given by Lewis Chase in American Literature (March 1934), 6:66-68, where it was first printed, from a copy of the original MS, then owned by Dr. Thomas R. Boggs. The present location of the MS is unknown, for after Dr. Boggs’ death it was not found among his papers. Poe is replying to Thomas’ letter of October 14, not, as Chase [page 315:] stated incorrectly, the one misdated as August 3 [actually September 3] (CL-326). The Thomas letter of October 14, 1841 (CL-333) asks if Poe has received the manuscript of Thomas’ song, “sent you the other day,” although he does not mention it by name; it also says that Dow is publishing the Index at Alexandria, and inquires if Judge Upshur is author of the Partisan Leader. Poe also posted a letter to Thomas, September 20 (CL-331), which Thomas answered, September 22 (CL-332). Poe replied on September 24 (LTR-126a).

Notes: Mrs. Sigourney contributed a poem, “To a Land Bird at Sea,” to Graham's (January 1842, 20:9). According to “The Pay for Periodical Writing,” in the New York Weekly Mirror (October 19, 1844, 1:28, sometimes erroneously attributed to Poe but actually by Willis), Graham paid prose writers from $2 to $12 a page, and poets from $5 to $50 an “article” (Quinn, p. 341). Prices were probably much less in 1841; for Poe offered Snodgrass “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt,” for the Baltimore [page 316:] Saturday Visiter (in his letter of June 4, 1842) at $4 a page, which he described as “the usual Magazine price” (LTR-137).

Source: facsimile of the original MS (1 p.) in G. S. Haight's Mrs. Sigourney, the Sweet Singer of Hartford, facing p. 118, where it was first printed. For a similar solicitation, see Mrs. Sigourney to Poe, June 11, 1836 (CL-150). In the MS, opening quotation marks precede “him with a poem.” With no ending marks, nor any clear purpose, they have been omitted in the present printing.

Notes: Following Poe's departure from the editorship of the SLM, Thomas W. White edited the magazine, very much as Poe says, from February 1837-December 1839 (?); then he was assisted by Matthew F. Maury, January 1840 (?)-September 1842, after which Maury edited it alone until July 1843 (American Magazines, 1:629). Mr. White died in January 1843, and Benjamin B. Minor took over the SLM interests in July 1843. Dr. Reynell Coates, H. W. Herbert, Park Benjamin, Mrs. Stephens, and Mrs. Embury were regular contributors to Graham's, and articles by them appear in many issues, especially from Mrs. Embury. T. S. Fay, submitted a series of essays on “Shakspeare” (beginning in January 1842, 20:58-60). Longfellow sent a poem, “The Goblet of Life” (January 1842, 20:5), and an essay on “German Writers: Heinrich Heine” (March 1842, 20:134-137). Willis did not contribute, noting that Godey paid him liberally for the exclusive use of his name in Philadelphia for 1842 (CL-344a and CL-350). A real “surprise” is Poe's mention of Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd, Sergeant-at-Law and an M.P., friend of major London literati, author of popular (although generally insipid) blank-verse plays, appearing twice in Poe's criticism (H [Works], 9:144 and 15:92-93). Talfourd contributed “Sonnet” (January 1842, 20:5). Poe had earlier been forced to propitiate Mrs. Sigourney, an inordinately popular American writer (see LTR-128 and LTR-61), and now to invite her contributions, whatever might be his private views of her merits. Estimates of her prolificity indicate 60 books and over 2,000 articles. Ironically, he stressed her lack of originality but also borrowed two lines for “The City in the Sea” from her poem, “Musing Thoughts” (see TOM [Poems], 1:204; also self-admitted in Poe's 1849 article “A Reviewer Reviewed,” in TOM [T&S], 3:1385).

Source: photocopy of the original MS (2 pp.) in the Connecticut Historical Society. The year date should be 1841; for in November 1842, Poe was no longer editor of Graham's. Poe is replying to Mrs. Sigourney's letter of November 13, 1841 (CL-344). [page 318:]

Notes: In Graham's for December 1841 (19:308), Poe says that of the 100,000 readers of the magazine, “one and only one” solved Dr. Frailey's cryptograph, which had appeared in the August number. The honor, he says, belongs to “Mr. Richard Bolton, of Pontotoc, Mississippi,” but adds that the solution arrived too late for inclusion in the November issue. Poe shows himself evasive and misleading in this response to Bolton. In LTR-131, Poe privately discredits Bolton's independent solving of the cryptogram by saying, “He pretends not to have seen my solution — but his own contains internal evidence of the fact.” For an analysis of the problem, see Wm. F. Friedman, “Edgar Allan Poe, Cryptographer,” American Literature, 8:266-280, where he concludes: “I must declare that Poe had utterly no foundation for his suspicion [stated to Thomas]. Internal evidence in Bolton's solution ... serves to indicate conclusively that his work was accomplished without the key. Nowhere can one find ‘three blunders in mine [Poe's] which are copied in his own ...’ Poe did not ... deny having received the latter's solution mailed on September 9 [page 320:] ... Poe must have received it by October 9. The key to the cryptogram did not appear in the September number ... but ... in the October number, which could not possibly have arrived before September 9” (8:276). In the final sentence of the first paragraph, Poe reshapes Senator W. L. Marcy's 1832 aphorism, defending Martin Van Buren against Henry Clay's attacks: “to the victor belong the spoils of the enemy.” The term “bottle-conjurer” is an alternate form for “conjuror” (see in LTR-131), referring to a street or raree-show magician, or a juggler of bottles and other objects. The OED shows the word only in one 1755 instance, but Poe's form implies a widespread use.

Poe's cryptographic display, intended to dazzle readers with his analytical brilliance and verbal legerdemain, concludes with the December 1841 issue of Graham's (H [Works], 14:140-148), where he prints a long letter with two “insoluble” cryptographs, submitted by someone whose name is given as “W. B. Tyler.” Both puzzles have now been separately decoded. The first success was that of Terence Whalen (Poe and the Masses, pp. 209-212) — a short passage independently translated by John Hodgson (“Decoding Poe? Poe, W. B. Tyler, and Cryptography,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 92:523-534), who correctly identified it as from Addison's Cato. The second, in 2000, was that of Gil Broza, spurred by a contest from Williams College. Broza decoded the longer, and far more challenging, prose excerpt, which appears to be from an unknown sentimental tale. The mystery of the cryptograms has been broken, but a perhaps even greater mystery remains. In 1985, Louis Renza proposed the tantalizing possibility that W. B. Tyler may have been none other than Poe himself (“Poe's Secret Autobiography,” The American Renaissance Reconsidered, pp. 86-87, n. 14). The notion has been adopted and enhanced by several other scholars, most notably Terence Whalen (Poe and the Masses, pp. 208-216) and Shawn Rosenheim (The Cryptographic Imagination, pp. 34-41), although the case is entirely conjectural and neither cryptogram reveals Poe as the author, as had been presumed before they were deciphered. (See also Stephen Rachman's article, “Cipher Solved, But Mystery Remains,” EAP Review, 3:77-79.) Whalen comments on the present letter, and LTR-131, concerning Poe's conflicting uses of cryptology to captivate and yet insulate himself from the magazine readers (pp. 207-208). Although the cryptograms as printed in Graham's are plagued with minor errors, Poe is overstating the problem by saying that they are set in “pi,” which suggests that many characters have been misarranged. [page 321:]

The spellings of “cypher” and “cipher” are both correct, although the “i” is closer to the Arabic root of the word. Poe alternates between the two, preferring the “y” form. In thirty-six separate works with the word used at least once, approximately twenty-two offer “cypher,” but in some twelve letters there are about eight with “cipher,” and of these there are two more with this kind of “doublet” usage: to Tomlin, LTR-162 and to Thomas, LTR-198 — proof of the freedom used by Poe in such matters.

Source: photoprint of the original MS (2 pp.) in the Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN), November 15, 1925, section 4, p. 7, where the letter was first printed. The location of the original MS is unknown. Poe is replying to Bolton's letter of November 4, 1841 (CL-338). Edward S. Sears, author of the article in the Commercial Appeal, also prints Bolton's letter of November 4, 1841, and one dated “June 10,” 1842, which should be January 10, 1842 (CL-354) (according to a letter from William K. Wimsatt, Jr. to John W. Ostrom; see Wimsatt, “What Poe Knew About Cryptography,” PMLA, 58:754-779). No other letter from Poe to Bolton is known.

Notes: For Thomas’ song, see Thomas to Poe, September 22 (CL-332), November 6 and 23, 1841 (CL-339 and CL-347), and LTR-127. Poe's “Autography” articles in Graham's for December 1841 and January 1842, are reprinted in H [Works], 15:209-261. For the reference to Bolton, see LTR-130 and note. Bolton had good reason to complain, as shown by William K. Friedman, Chief Signal Officer of the US War Department, who reprints Bolton's letter (with an incorrect date of the 14th) in his excellent study, “EAP, Cryptographer” in American Literature, 8:266-80, specifically 8:274-276. Friedman concludes, “Poe had utterly no foundation for his suspicion.” Also see expert Friedman's treatments, under the same title, in Signal Corps Bulletin, pp. 41-53 and 54-75. Poe's early training in classical and modern languages (see Quinn, pp. 71, 99-101) may account for the advice given Thomas. Poe had not received a letter from J. P. Kennedy, apparently, since April 26, 1836. Jesse E. Dow, a companion of Poe and of Thomas in 1840, soon went to Washington to hold minor political offices and to edit various newspapers, the Index being the first. Poe's reference to the three witches of Macbeth (“when shall we three meet again”), and his wish to “slip over to Washington” seems to reveal once again his desire to seek respite from poverty by securing a government position, as displayed in his disastrous trip in March 1843. (For more on Dow, see LTR-124, LTR-127, and LTR-197.) Clinton Bradshaw (1835) was Thomas’ first novel; Poe may have had it in hand for the preparation of notes on Thomas’ biography requested by Griswold (see LTR-124) or, more likely, for the “Chapter on Autography” article, which included Thomas (Graham's, December 1841; H [Works], 15:209-210). The dedication to the first edition of Clinton Bradshaw reads: “To my sister, Frances Ann / My Dear Sister,/ As a slight acknowledgment of your affection, I / inscribe these volumes with your name. / Your affectionate brother, / The Author. / Philadelphia, Sept. 17, 1835” (provided by TOM, from the first edition copy in the Yale University Library). Despite his boast, there is reason to doubt Poe's proficiency in Greek, as his difficulty with the spelling of “scholasticos” reveals (see LTR-186 and notes; also the brief “Poe's Greek” in EAP [page 324:] Review, 2:71-77). Observe the variant spelling used for “bottle-conjuror” in LTR-130. For George Denison Prentice, see LTR-126a, and note.

Source: photocopy of the original MS (3 pp.) in the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library. On the verso of page 3 appears the address: “F. W. Thomas Esqr / Washington / D.C.”; the letter was postmarked Philadelphia, November 26. Thomas noted on the envelope: “Received November 27.” The MS has a hole in the right side of page 3, and in two places in the cover where the seal was applied. Poe is answering Thomas’ letter of November 23, 1841 (CL-347). However, Thomas wrote on November 6 (CL-339); Poe replied on November 8-9 (CL-341), according to Thomas’ letter of November 10 (CL-343).

Notes: For Poe's five-year denial of Virginia's tuberculosis, see Silverman, pp. 179-180 (also LTR-135, LTR-141, and LTR-203 and notes). Poe clearly expected Thomas to communicate his praise of Robert Tyler to the gentleman himself, whose influence he wished to cultivate. Poe still hoped to publish the Penn Magazine and was trying to enlist the aid of Tyler, son of the President of the United States and a friend of Thomas. For Robert Tyler's high opinion of Poe as a critic, see Thomas to Poe, February 26, 1842 (CL-358). Poe's “A Chapter on Autography” in Graham's for December 1841 included articles on Thomas G. Spear, Ezra Holden, Robert T. Conrad, and Charles J. Peterson (see H [Works], 15:210-211, 212, 232-233, and 235). Poe's self-revealed overpraise of Conrad (see H [Works], 15:232-234) does not suggest that the prominent Judge might eventually aid him professionally, as he did as a member of the committee awarding him the prize for “The Gold-Bug” (see The Poe [page 327:] Log, p. 416). Poe rather harshly reviewed Joseph H. Ingraham's Lafitte in the SLM (August 1836, 2:593-596; reprinted in H [Works], 9:106-116, and Writings, 5:260-262). This review comments that the novel “is based, in a great degree, upon a sketch by Mr. Flint.” Poe included Park Benjamin, editor of the New World, in his “Chapter on Autography” (Graham's, November 1841; H [Works], 15:183-184). In a “prospective notice” in the Saturday Evening Post, May 1, 1841, Poe anticipated the plot of Dickens’ Barnaby Rudge; he reviewed the book at length, recalling his earlier analysis, in Graham's, February 1842 (reprinted in H [Works], 11:38-64). Gerald Grubb, having examined the relations of Dickens and Poe in three exhaustive articles in Nineteenth-Century Fiction (5:1-22, 101-120, and 209-221), declares that of Poe's five predictions about the plot of the novel, only one proved correct — that the “idiot” is the murderer's son. Poe's statement about the profitability of Graham's is an overestimate, as explained by Whalen in Poe and the Masses, p. 289, n. 30, citing Poe's letter to C. Anthon, before November 2, 1844 (LTR-186).

Source: text of the letter as printed in The Autograph (January-February 1912), 1:42-43. Poe is replying to Thomas’ letter of January 13, 1842 (CL-355).

Notes: Rev. John Nelson McJilton (1805-1875), of Baltimore, was an Episcopalian clergyman and the first superintendent of public schools. “Russian Revenge,” translated from the French by Esther Wetherald, appeared in Graham's (June 1842, 20:322-325). By quoting the phrase “the olden time,” Poe is invoking the second stanza of his poem “The Haunted Palace.” More directly, he is referring to McJilton's two poems submitted to the SLM in September 1835 (signed with the pseudonym Giles McQuiggin) and another in May 1836 (see Jackson, Contributors and Contributions to SLM, pp. 3-4 and 14). Poe's final cordial sentence scarcely accords with the negativity of the review acknowledged by Poe in LTR-120.

Source: photocopy of the original MS (1 p.), formerly in the collection of William H. Koester, and now in the Humanities Research Center of the University of Texas at Austin. The envelope, a separate leaf, is addressed to the “Rev^d J. N. M^cJilton, / Baltimore / Md ”; and initialed “E A P.” in the lower left corner. It is postmarked at Philadelphia, March 15. Poe is replying to McJilton's letter of February 14, 1842 (CL-357). For the only other known correspondence between Poe and McJilton, see the note to LTR-121 (in which Poe thought McJilton was Timotheus Whackemwell).

Notes: The identity of the manuscript referred to is “The Pit and the Pendulum,” which was printed in The Gift for 1843, published by Carey & Hart in the fall of 1842. By May of 1842, Poe had left his position at Graham's Magazine (see LTR-134 and LTR-137).

Source: facsimile of the original MS (1 p.) as given in a catalog from a Paris auction of about May 1990, sold by J. Espagnon. The tentative date is assigned based on the use of “Office Graham's Magazine” in the return address and the timing of Poe's somewhat hostile departure from his role as editor at the magazine.