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

[page 123, continued:]

Freeman Hunt (1804-1858) was a native of Quincy, Massachusetts. His father, a shipbuilder, died when the boy was three years old, and at an early age young Hunt learned the printer's trade while serving an apprenticeship in Worcester. At the age of twelve he went to Boston, where he found employment in the offices of various newspapers. While working for the Daily Traveller he is said to have received a promotion when it was discovered that he was the author of some anonymous contributions that had impressed the editor.

Before establishing the magazine with which his name came to be most closely associated, Hunt had a hand in a number of [page 124:] ephemeral publishing ventures. In 1828 with John Putnam he founded the firm of Putnam and Hunt, which for a time published the Juvenile Miscellany and the Ladies’ Magazine, both of which were among the pioneers in their fields. Following the dissolution of this partnership, Hunt went to New York, where, in 1831, he established a short-lived weekly, the New York Traveler. Returning to Boston, he became a managing director of the Bewick Company, an association of engravers, authors, printers, and bookbinders which edited and published the American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge and issued a reprint of the London Penny Magazine.

In 1837, having returned to New York, he began to project a magazine which would cater to commercial interests, and in July, 1839, issued the first number of the Merchants’ Magazine and Commercial Review. Until his death some twenty years later he remained sole editor and proprietor of this profitable publication. He was married to Lucia Blake in 1829, to Laura Phinney in 1831, and to Elizabeth Parmenter in 18$3

Hunt was the nominal author of several books, most of which are largely compilations or depend heavily upon contributions from other pens. Those which followed American Anecdotes, Original and Select (1830) were slanted toward the class of readers to which his magazine most appealed: Letters about the Hudson River and Its Vicinity (1836), Worth and Wealth; A Collection of Maxims and Miscellanies for Merchants and Men of Business (1856), and Lives of American Merchants (2 vols., 1856-1858).

The author of his obituary in the New York Times stated [page 125:] that Hunt “had an unfortunate foible for drink, which he strove manfully to overcome, and did, so far as not to allow it to interfere with his business engagements.” He was “not a man of brilliant talents or profound learning” the writer continued; but was “a skilful manager and exceedingly attentive to his business, and had accumulated a considerable fortune by it.”(1)

It appears impossible to determine the date at which Poe's personal acquaintance with Hunt began, but it seems likely that the “Literati” sketch of Hunt was written from some first-hand knowledge. Both Poe and Hunt were among those listed by a correspondent of Mrs. Whitman as present at a reception given by Miss Lynch in January, 1846.(2) For some fifteen months prior to that date Poe, while associated with the Mirror and the Broadway Journal, had worked in the vicinity of the office of the Merchants’ Magazine at 142 Fulton Street. Hunt had long been known to N. P. Willis, one of the Mirror's editors. It can be shown that before 1846, Poe and Hunt had become aware of each other professionally and that in this respect each regarded the other favorably.

During the period of Poe's connection with the Broadway Journal he and Hunt exchanged friendly compliments in their respective periodicals. The Merchants’ Magazine for April, 1845, [page 126:] took favorable notice of the Journal, praising especially its critical department and terming the periodical “the nearest approach to our beau ideal of what a literary Journal should be.”(3) Later in the year Hunt referred to Poe's Tales as a volume which contained “some fine specimens of the genius of that author, who takes so high a stand among our American fiction writers and poets.”(4) His notice of The Raven, and Other Poems was similarly flattering:

On several occasions Poe, in the Broadway Journal, praised the Merchant's Magazine and its editor. “Mr. Hunt's admirable magazine is now in its seventy-fourth number,” he wrote in reviewing the issue for August, 1845, “— a pregnant example of what may be effected by combined talent and energy.”(6) A month later he called attention to the absence of sectional bias in Hunt's magazine, a merit he did not often ascribe to the periodicals which came under his notice.(7) In November Poe wrote of the [page 127:] Merchants’ Magazine at greater length than usual, expressing his admiration for the manner in which Hunt, single-handedly and without funds, “succeeded in establishing on the firmest basis a magazine, which, independently of its literary, or commercial utility, is decidedly the best property of any similar journal in the world.”(8)

Hunt's success with the Merchants’ Magazine may have helped to keep alive Poe's hopes concerning the Stylus, and the method Hunt had used to put his periodical on a sound financial basis may have provided Poe with a plan for founding his own magazine. His procedure in establishing the magazine was Poe's chief subject in the “Literati” sketch of Hunt. He had begun with no capital, wrote Poe with admiration, and, neglecting “the hackneyed modes of advertising largely, circulating flashy prospectuses and sending out numerous ‘agents,’” called personally upon his friends among the merchants of New York. Then, in order to obtain further subscriptions, he “pushed on to the other chief cities of the Union.” Furthermore, Hunt, in both its editorial and business departments, had “kept the whole undertaking within his own hands.”(9) Earlier, Poe had written of Hunt's procedure: “The steps taken were infallible, and the triumph sure.”(10) Poe's letter to Eveleth of January 4, 1848, shows that he thought [page 128:] Hunt's method worth following:

Poe apparently maintained some sort of personal contact with Hunt until early in 1847. He seems to have used the office of the Merchants’ Magazine as a convenient city address at which to receive mail.(12) But this arrangement did not always work to Poe's satisfaction. On March 10, 1847, he wrote to Mrs. Jane E. Locke that her letter, late in reaching him, “was handed to ... a friend of mine, for me, by Mr Freeman Hunt of the Merchants’ Magazine, without any explanation of the mode in which it came into his hands or the cause of its detention.”(13)

When Poe's libel suit against the Mirror came to trial in February 1847, Hunt was one of three character witnesses for Poe, who, according to the Tribune, testified that they had never “heard anything against him except that he is occasionally addicted intoxication.”(14) [page 129:]

It is ironic that Poe, who quarreled with the editors of many of the literary magazines which published his work, should have maintained so friendly an association with the owner of a commercial journal which could not use his productions.

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 125:]

1 A. Everett Peterson's sketch of Hunt in the Dictionary of American Biography; Appletons' Cyclopaedia; the National Cyclopedia, XXIV, 352-353; and Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 174l-1850, New York, 1930, pp. 696-698 and passim. The quotations are from the New York Times, March 4, 1858, p. 4, 1858, p. 4.

2 Didier, The Life and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, p. 12.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 126:]

3 XII, 400.

4 XIII, 205 (August, 1845).

5 XIV, 107 (January, 1846).

6 Broadway Journal, II, 75 (August, 1845).

7 Ibid., II, 137 (September 6, 1845).

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 127:]

8 Ibid., II, 276 (November 8, 1845). Much of what Poe wrote here was, after revision, included in the “Literati” sketch of Hunt.

9 Godey's, XXXII, 270 (June, 1846); Works, XV, 40-41.

10 Broadway Journal, II, 75 (August 9, 1845).

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 128:]

11 Ostrom, op. cit., II, 356-357.

12 Poe to William D. Ticknor, December 24, 1846; ibid., II ,335.

13 Ibid., II, 346. This is a much-revised draft of a letter, a corrected copy of which Poe presumably mailed.

14 Tribune, February 18, 1847.