Text: Anonymous, “[Review of Poe's Tales],” Tait's Edinburgh Magazine (Edinburgh, UK), vol. 12, no. 9, September 1845, p. 612

[page 612, col. 1, continued:]

Tales. By Edgar A. Poe. London: Wiley and Putnam.

We take for granted that Edgar A. Poe is an American. His tales are of a peculiar, we had almost said, of an original character; and though monstrosities, often revolting, nay, disgusting, and chargeable with all kinds of bad taste, there is a rude power and a subtlety about them which is not without a fascination of the hideous or disagreeable sort. Some of the Tales, or Sketches, are attempts at philosophizing, in the safe way of making imaginary personages broach wild hypotheses, and conjectural systems, as supernatural revelations. The records of every court of criminal justice furnish, in doubtful and perplexing cases, or conflicting testimony and contradictions, much more curious tales than those which Mr. Poe has invented, and the type of which is Zadig.