Text: Anonymous, “[Review of the Works of Edgar Allan Poe,” Princeton Magazine (Princeton, NJ), January 1850, pp. 188-189

[page 188, continued:]

THE WORKS OF EDGAR ALLEN [[ALLAN]] POE; With Notices of his Life and Genius. By N. P. Willis, J. R. Lowell, and R. W. Griswold. In two volumes. 12mo. New York. J. S. Redfield. 185

The first volume of this work contains the Tales, the second the Poetry and the Miscellanies of Mr. Poe, the two volumes containing nearly a thousand pages. A letter from the mother of Mrs. Poe, which is appended to the first volume, informs us that before leaving home for the last time, on the 29th of June, 1849, being under the impression that he might be called suddenly from the world, My. Poe requested that Mr. Griswold should act as his literary executor and super intend the publication of his works; and that Mr. Willis should write such observations upon his life and character, as [page 189:] he might deem suitable to address to thinking men in vindication of his memory. The fidelity with which Mr. Willis has discharged the duty thus devolved upon him, will be acknowledged by all who read the sad and touching tribute which he here prays to the memory of his erratic and unhappy friend. Mr. Willis describes, with beautiful simplicity, the devoted affection cherished for Mr. Poe by his mother-in-law, who was also his aunt. ‘It was,” he says, “a hard fate that she was watching over. He was always in pecuniary difficulty, and with his sick wife, frequently in want of the necessaries of life. Winter after winter, for years, the most touching sight to us, in this whole city, has keen that tireless minister to genius, thinly and insufficiently clad, going from office to office with a poem, or an article on some literary subject to sell. Sometimes simply pleading, in a broken voice, that ‘he was ill,’ and begging for him. * * Her daughter died a year and a half since, but she did not desert him. She continued his ministering angel — living with him — caring for him — guarding him against exposure, and when he was carried away by temptation, amid grief and the loneliness of feelings unreplied to, and awoke from his self-abandonment prostrated, in destitution and suffering, begging for him still. If woman's devotion, born with a first love, and fed with human passion, hallow its object, as it is allowed to do, what does not a devotion like this — pure, disinterested, and holy as the watch of an invisible spirit — say for him who inspired it?’ A notice of Mr. Pee's life and works by James Russel [[Russell]] Lowell is prefixed to the work, and it is embellished with a beautiful mezzotint likeness of Mr. Poe.