Text: Evert Augustus Duyckinck, “[Review of Poe's Tales],” New York Weekly News (New York, NY), July 5, 1845, p. 2, col. 3

[page 2, column 3, continued:]

Notices of New Books.

Tales by Edgar A. Poe. Wiley & Putnam's Library of American Books, No. II.

Mr. Poe's tales will be welcomed in this neat and convenient form. They have hitherto been scattered over the newspapers and magazines of the country, chiefly of the South, and have been scarcely, if at all, known to Northern and Eastern readers. Singly, the most remarkable have been received with great favor. The Gold-Bug received a prize of five hundred dollars. The Fall of the House of Usher was pirated in Bentley's (London) Magazine, and the Murders in the Rue Morgue appeared translated in one of the Parisian journals. The Purloined Letter appeared in this year's Gift, and was not copied into any American paper, we believe, till it had been produced in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, and had been republished here in Littell's Living Age of Foreign Literature. It is to be presumed that our American readers will not be ashamed of the volume after these circumstances. It is eminently original and characteristic of the peculiar idiosyncrasy of the author. The subtle ingenuity exhibited in the construction will strike everyone; the analysis of this power is a subject worthy of the maturest critic. The Gold-Bug is a tale of Captain Kidd's treasure, the interest of which depends upon the solution of an intricate cypher. Since this tale was published the author has received historical and other papers in cypher sent to him from different parts of the country to be unmasked. We believe he has generally succeeded, but never with so brilliant and splendidly lucrative result as in the tale of the Gold-Bug.

The murders in the Rue Morgue, the History [[Mystery]] of Marie Roget and the Purloined Letter turn upon matters of police, and would do credit either to the sagacity of an Indian hunter or the civilized skill of a Fouche for their ingenuity and keenness of scent. Marie Roget is the story of Mary Rogers, the Cigar Girl, the scene being transferred from the banks of the Hudson to those of the Seine.