Text: James B. Reece, “Poe in New York, 1844,” Poe's Poe and the New York Literati Story, dissertation, 1954 (This material is protected by copyright)

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In April, 1844, two years before his “Literati” sketches began to appear in Godey's Lady's Book,(1) Edgar Allan Poe moved from Philadelphia to New York, in or near which city he was to make his home during the five and a half years that remained to him. Though in his lifetime he was never placed in the front rank of American writers, beside Irving, Cooper, Bryant, and Longfellow, he had by 1844 established himself as a literary figure of some importance. During his editorial association with the Southern Literary Messenger (August, 1835-January, 1837) and with Graham's Magazine (April, 1841-May, 1842), the [page 3:] circulation of those magazines had greatly increased; he had also served as co-editor of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine (July, 1839-June, 1840). As yet he had attained no great reputation as a poet, although he had published three volumes of verse between 1827 and 1831 and had since contributed poems to various His fiction had been more successful, especially the tales of ratiocination and those which dealt with weird and macabre themes. It was as a critic, however, that he was most widely known. Though the number of his slashing reviews had been few in comparison with his total output, his occasional severity had made a lasting impression. Undoubtedly it was these caustic criticisms that Lowell had in mind when he wrote, not long after Poe's removal to New York, that “he seems sometimes to mistake his phial of prussic-acid for his inkstand.”(2) Many New York writers very likely had not forgotten his harsh treatment of their fellow townsmen in reviewing Theodore S. Fay's Norman Leslie(3) and William L. Stone's Ups and Downs in the Life [page 4:] of a Distressed Gentleman.(4)

By April, 1844, much of Poe's important work in criticism had been done, but yet to come were “The Philosophy of Composition” and “The Poetic Principle.” Other prose productions of the New York period were “The Purloined Letter,” “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,” “Hop-Frog,” and the philosophical treatise Eureka. Still unwritten were such memorable poems as “The Raven,” “For Annie,” “Ulalume,” “The Bells,” “Eldorado,” and “Annabel Lee.”

Upon his arrival in the city Poe's most urgent need was for steady employment, but it was six months before he found a regular position. In the meantime he was dependent upon free-lance contributions to the magazines, chiefly those of Richmond and Philadelphia, though he soon began to contribute to New York publications. A week after coming to New York he created a short-lived sensation by publishing his “Balloon-Hoax” in the Sun, the penny newspaper which had prospered since the appearance there of Richard Adams Locke's “Moon-Hoax” in 1835. For several weeks he was a correspondent for the Columbia Spy,(5) a weekly published in Columbia, Pennsylvania. In October, 1844, he found employment as assistant to N. P. Willis and George P. [page 5:] Morris on the Evening Mirror, a position he held, until February of the following year, when he joined Charles F. Briggs in the editorship of the Broadway Journal.

At the time of Poe's removal to New York the city could claim as residents few authors who were then producing works of enduring quality. William Cullen Bryant held an honorable rank among American poets; Walt Whitman was a little-known contributor to magazines and newspapers; Herman Melville had not yet published his first novel. Also living in the city were a number of authors of considerable contemporary fame whose reputations have since greatly declined. Fitz-Greene Halleck, despite his scanty output and the long interval which had elapsed since his last notable production, was widely regarded as one of the foremost poets of the country; and N. P. Willis, one of the most popular authors of his time, had met with immense success both as a poet and as a writer of tales and travel sketches. Numerous authors of lesser merit had found a following among magazine readers, if one may judge from the regularity of their contributions to those periodicals. The New York literary world that Poe knew, as aptly described by one of his biographers, —

Though in quality and prestige the New York writers were not the equal of the New England group, the city afforded certain advantages which made it particularly attractive to those who, like Poe, depended for their livelihood upon the pen. Between 1820 and 1852 more publishing firms were operating in New York than in Boston and Philadelphia combined, and during the same period “the book trade ... found its unquestioned center at New York.”(7) In 1845 New York, with a population of approximately 400,000, was by far the largest city of the country, and the concentration there of potential readers had resulted in the establishment of newspapers and magazines in sufficient numbers to supply its needs. Among the daily newspapers of the city were the Evening Post, edited by Bryant, Moses Y. Beach's Sun, James Gordon Bennett's Herald, Horace Greeley's Tribune, and the Mirror of N. P. Willis and George P. Morris. The most flourishing of the monthly magazines were Lewis Gaylord Clark's Knickerbocker, George H. Colton's American Review, John L. O'Sullivan's Democratic Review, and John Inman's Columbian Magazine. In addition to the weekly editions published by some of the daily [page 7:] papers, the weeklies were represented by Seba Smith's Rover and J. S. Bartlett's Albion. Numerous other periodicals had been and were being established, most of them, like Briggs and Poe's Broadway Journal and Thomas Dunn English's Aristidean, destined to failure after the completion of a few volumes. Poe was only one of a large number of writers who had been drawn to the city which offered literary employment on so extensive a scale. An indication of this influx is provided by the fact that of the thirty-eight authors whom Poe sketched as “The Literati of New York City” only eleven were natives of that city. Nine had come from Massachusetts, four from up-state New York, three from Connecticut, two each from Maine and Vermont, one each from New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia, and four had been born abroad.(8)

Before the early months of 1845 Poe's acquaintance with those New York authors whom he later sketched in the “Literati” papers seems to have been very limited. Little is known concerning his activities during an earlier stay of more than a [page 8:] year in New York, in 1837-1838, and there is no certain evidence that he made the acquaintance of any of his future subjects at that time. He did, however, attend the complimentary dinner given by the booksellers of New York in honor of writers at the City Hotel on March 30, 1837. Among the guests were Fitz-Greene Halleck, John W. Francis, Lewis Gaylord Clark, and Richard Adams Locke,(9) all of whom were to be sketched in the series. At any rate, Poe had made the acquaintance of Locke, and possibly of Halleck, before moving to New York in 1844. English, whom he had known in Philadelphia, had preceded him to New York. In the months that followed his removal to New York, Poe appears to have made few acquaintances of any sort. “For the last seven or eight months,” he wrote to Frederick W. Thomas on September 8, “I have been playing hermit in earnest, nor have I seen a living soul out of my own family .... ”(10) By this date Poe was living in a farmhouse on the Bloomingdale Road, about five miles from the city. He informed Thomas on January 4, 1845, that he seldom visited the city “and, of course, am not in the way of matters end things as I used to be.”(11) He had become personally acquainted with Willis, however, in October, upon commencing his work for the Mirror, and at some time near the beginning of 1845, [page 9:] when the Broadway Journal began publication, he met Briggs.

But a significant change in Boe's status among the literati of the city was at hand. In the letter to Thomas of January 4 he had remarked, “In about three weeks, I shall move to the City, and recommence a life of activity under better auspices, I hope, than ever before.”(12) Perhaps Poe anticipated the fame that was soon to be his. In the Mirror for January 29, and in the February number of the American Review, he published “The Raven,” which quickly scored one of the greatest popular successes ever achieved by an American poem. Newspapers and magazines in many parts of the country copied it, and numerous parodies followed. “ ‘The Raven’ has had a great ‘run,’ Thomas —,” he wrote to his friend in May, “but I wrote it for the express purpose of running — just as I did the ‘Gold Bug,’ you know. The bird beat the bug, though, all hollow.”(13) Poe had emerged from the obscurity in which he had lived since coming to New York. “The Raven” gave him his entree to the salons of the literati.

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