Text: Edgar Allan Poe (?), Literary, Broadway Journal (New York), April 26, 1845, vol. 1, no. 17, p. ???-???

[page 268, column 1, continued:]

THE CHRONICLES OF PINEVILLE. By the author of Major Jones’ Courtship, with twelve illustrations, engraved from original designs by F. O. C. Darley. Philadelphia. Carey and Hart. 1845.

IT is still a disputed point among certain critics whether America has produced a humorous writer, and we have heard the author of the book before us cited as the best example of a humorist that America can boast. But the Author of Major Jones’ Courtship is a comic rather than a humorous writer. The merit of his sketches lies in their fidelity to the scenes described, and not in their wit and humor. The illustrations by Darley are the best of the kind that we have seen in any American work, they are executed with great freedom, and are very well as mere designs, but they hick character, as they could not fail to do, since they were not drawn from nature. They might be used to illustrate tales of Michigan or Massachusetts life with as much propriety as sketches of life in Georgia. In one of the illustrations there is a stone cottage, and in another there is a row of three story houses; hut we doubt the existence of such things in Pineville. The cuts are executed with greater neatness and beauty than we are accustomed to see in our wood engravings, and they are exceedingly well printed.