Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - People

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Sections: Biography Criticism Bibliography

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(Born: July 16, 1785 - Died: August 18, 1857)

American merchant, author and poet. He began his career as a clerk in 1808, leaving in 1812 to open his own firm. In various arrangements with his brothers, his business primiarly involved the trading of goods with East India. He was president of the Phoenix Bank, in New York city, 1834-1838, remaining involved in some capacity in subsequent years. He was a member of the New York Hospital Society. As a literary contributor, he was associated with the New York American and the Knickerbocker Magazine, to which he was able to offer a steady stream of articles without concern for payment. According to W. Barrett, Cary may have “married late in life, and to a Miss Pyne,” although he admits to not being certain. Cary died at the age of 72 in Florence, Italy and is buried there, in the Swiss Protestant (or English) Cemetery.

No portrait has been identified.

His date of birth is established by Cary family papers in the Massacheusetts Historical Society in Boston, documenting the date of his death and stating that his age was 72 years and 34 days. At some point, his remains were exhumed from Florence, Italy and moved to a family monument in Rumney Marsh Burial Ground, in Revere, MA, just a bit north of Boston.

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Criticism:

Notice from “The Literati”
- “Henry Cary” (“The Literati of New York City” - No. III) — July 1846 — Godey’s Lady’s Book
- “Henry Cary” — 1848 — Literary America
- “Henry Cary” (“The Literati”) — 1850 — WORKS

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Bibliography:

Barrett, Walter, The Old Merchants of New York, New York: Thomas R. Knox (2 vols), 1885 3:118-123
Clark, Lewis G. (as editor), “The Late Henry Cary,” Knickerbocker Magazine, vol. LI, no. 4, April 1858, pp. 422-426 (This long entry in “The Editor’s Table” is primarily an appreciation of his writings, with few biographical details.)
Duyckinck, E. A. and G. L., “Henry Cary,” Cyclopedia of American Literature, New York: Charles Scribner, 1856, 2:297-299 (notes his birth date only as “at the close of the last century.”)
Heartman, Charles F. and James R. Canny, A Bibliography of First Printings of the Writings of Edgar Allan Poe, Hattiesburg, MS: The Book Farm, 1943.
Mabbott, Thomas Ollive, ed., The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe (Vols 2-3 Tales and Sketches), Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1978. (Second printing 1979)
Reece, James B., Poe and the New York Literati: A Study of the “Literati” Sketches and of Poe’s Relations with the NewYork Writers, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Duke University, 1954.
Thomas, Dwight and David K. Jackson, The Poe Log: A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1849, Boston: G. K. Hall & Sons, 1987.

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[S:0 - JAS] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - People - Henry Cary