Text: Anonymous, “Poe,” Literary World (Boston, MA), vol. XV, no. 24, November 29, 1884, p. 417, cols. 1-2

[page 417, column 1, continued:]

POE.*

THE interest in Poe is certainly not dying out; we incline to the opinion that it is increasing. The present season witnesses not only this revived edition of his works complete, but a promised new study of his life and works by Mr. Woodberry, and at least one or two fresh magazine articles upon his genius and character. The present edition of the works is not a new one, but has the freshness of a new impression, of a new binding, and of the imprint of a new publisher. It is for substance Redfield's edition of 1856, which, by the vicissitudes of business, has passed successively through the hands of Mr. Widdleton and Mr. Bush, to rest in those of its present proprietors. It calls for no words here, beyond the mere cataloguing of the contents of its several volumes.

The first volume opens with well-known critical papers on Poe by Stoddard, Lowell and Willis, and two essays by Poe on the Poetic Principle and the Rationale of Verse. [column 2:] Then follow some thirty miscellaneous poems, headed by “The Raven,” and a dozen “Poems Written in Youth.” The volume closes with five Prose Essays, which, in the contents, are defectively classed with the poems. In Volume II we have twenty-three tales; in Volume III the tales continue to the number of seventeen; in Volume IV are thirty-four more. The greater part of Volume V is occupied with the “Eureka,” “The Philosophy of Composition,” “The Marginalia,” and the “Chapter on Autographs,” the concluding 125 pages being occupied with Poe's famous series of biographical and critical notices of New York “Literati,” originally published in the Lady's Book. Thirthy-nine-similar studies compose the sixth volume and complete the set. Here are to be found those notorious papers on Longfellow and Lowell, and the last two volumes divide between them a large mass of slashing independent criticism upon the best known American men and women of letters belonging to Poe's time.

The illustrations consist of a few facsimiles of Poe's manuscript inserted in the first volume, a vignette of his Fordham Cottage duplicated on the title-page of each of the six, and a series of frontispieces for the several volumes, the first of which is a portrait of Poe on steel, while the others are etchings illustrative of subjects in his writings. One additional etching has spilled over into the body of Volume IV, and there are ornamental head and tail-pieces of the chapters. The edition is suitable for ordinary library use.

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 417, column 1:]

* The Works of Edgar Allan Poe. With an Introduction and Memoir by Richard Henry Stoddard. In 6 vols. Illus. A. C. Armstrong & Son. $9.00.