A Chapter on Autography

by Edgar Allan Poe, Don Carlos Seitz (Editor)

Reprint of the 1926 ed. published by L. Macveagh, New York.

92 pages, Library Binding

First published January 1, 1836

About the author

The name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead. His works have been in print since 1827 and include such literary classics as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, and The Fall of the House of Usher. This versatile writer’s oeuvre includes short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, and hundreds of essays and book reviews. He is widely acknowledged as the inventor of the modern detective story and an innovator in the science fiction genre, but he made his living as America’s first great literary critic and theoretician. Poe’s reputation today rests primarily on his tales of terror as well as on his haunting lyric poetry.

Just as the bizarre characters in Poe’s stories have captured the public imagination so too has Poe himself. He is seen as a morbid, mysterious figure lurking in the shadows of moonlit cemeteries or crumbling castles. This is the Poe of legend. But much of what we know about Poe is wrong, the product of a biography written by one of his enemies in an attempt to defame the author’s name.

The real Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809. Edgar was the second of three children. His other brother William Henry Leonard Poe would also become a poet before his early death, and Poe’s sister Rosalie Poe would grow up to teach penmanship at a Richmond girls’ school. Within three years of Poe’s birth both of his parents had died, and he was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia while Poe’s siblings went to live with other families. Mr. Allan would rear Poe to be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe had dreams of being a writer in emulation of his childhood hero the British poet Lord Byron. Early poetic verses found written in a young Poe’s handwriting on the backs of Allan’s ledger sheets reveal how little interest Poe had in the tobacco business.

For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_al...

Reviews

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

In November of 1841 Poe published A Chapter on Autography. In it he wrote: ". . . that a strong analogy does generally and naturally exist between every man’s chirography and character, will be denied by none but the unreflecting. . . . Our design is three-fold:—In the first place, seriously to illustrate our position that the mental features are indicated (with certain exceptions) by the hand-writing; secondly, to indulge in a little literary gossip; and, thirdly, to furnish our readers with a more accurate and at the same time a more general collection of the autographs of our literati than is to be found elsewhere. . . . Next to the person of a distinguished man-of-letters, we desire to see his portrait—next to his portrait, his autograph. In the latter, especially, there is something which seems to bring him before us in his true idiosyncrasy—in his character of scribe." (pp. 12-13)

The article that followed was composed entirely of reproductions of autographs accompanied by brief notes in which Poe used the peculiarities of the handwriting to illuminate each author’s character. With its resonances of psychic abilities and the opportunity for Poe to make remonstrances at rivals, this literary handwriting analysis was a natural occupation for him since Poe enjoyed ciphering of all kinds and he carried it through with evident enthusiasm since he followed it up with two more autographical study articles on more literati. Even though some critics at the time claimed Poe was only "venting his spleen" at his fellow literati I found he also praised more than he disparaged.

The following is a list of:
WHO'S WHO in A Chapter on Autography (in the order in which they appear) in this book.
Charles Anthon, Professor of Classic Tongues at Columbia U.
Washington Irving, essayist, novelist, diplomat, historian.
Park Benjamin, poet and journalist.
Nathaniel Parker Willis, poet and journalist; Editor of The Mirror.
John Pendleton Kennedy, novelist and Secretary of the Navy .
Mrs. Lydia Huntley Sigourney, poet.
Robert Walsh.
William Cullen Bryant, poet, Editor of the New York Evening Post; historian.
Fitz-Green Halleck, poet.
Rufus Dawes, poet.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, poet and professor at Harvard.
Edward Everett, orator and publicist.
William Gilmore Simms, novelist.
Rev. Joseph Holt Ingraham, clergyman.
C. S. Henry, educator.
Mrs. Emma Catherine Embury, née Manley, poet.
Miss Eliza Leslie, author.
Joseph Clay Neal, humorist.
Rufus Wilmot Griswold, critic and author.
James Fenimore Cooper, novelist.
John Neal, author and poet.
Miss Catherine Maria Sedgwick, author.
Francis Lieber, author, political economist.
Rev. Francis Lester Hawks, clergyman.
Rev. John Pierpont, poet and clergyman.
Henry William Herbert, author.
Mrs. Catherine H. W. Esling, née Waterman, author.
Mrs. Elizabeth Price Ellet, née Lummis, author and poet.
Judge Mordecai M. Noah, author, and journalist.
Rev. Orestes A. Brownson, author and clergyman.
Judge Beverly Tucker, author, and journalist.
John Sanderson, editor.
Miss Hannah Flagg Gould, poet.
F. W. Thomas , novelist.
Robert Morris, poet.
Seba Smith , humorist. Creator of Major Jack Downing. (Jack Downing was a pseudonym used by several satirists who wrote letters ridiculing President Andrew Jackson. Poe, in 1836, thought James Brooks was the “original” Jack, though modern scholars all award the palm to Seba Smith.)

Judge Joseph Hopkinson, author and jurist.
Lieut. Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, author and naval officer.
John Graham Palfrey, professor and historian.
Dr. Robert Montgomery Bird, physician, author and playwright.
Rev. William Ellery Channing, Unitarian clergyman, author, humanitarian.
Col. William Leete Stone, editor and biographer.
Jared Sparks, professor and historian.
Hugh Swinton Legare, jurist.
Joseph R. Chandler, editor.
Count L. Fitzgerald Tasistro, poet.
Dr. J. K. Mitchell.
Mrs. Sara Josepha Hale, author and editor.
Andrew McMackin.
Albert Pike, author, lawyer and soldier.
Richard Adams Locke, editor and author.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, poet and philosopher.
Dr. James McHenry, author.
Lambert A. Wilmer, author.
George Henry Calvert, poet and journalist.
William Davis Gallagher, poet and journalist.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, poet, humorist, and physician.
Richard Penn Smith, editor.
General George P. Morris, poet and journalist.
N. C. Brooks.
Bishop George Washington Doane.
Henry T. Tuckerman, essayist and art critic.
Theodore Sedgwick Fay, author and diplomat.
Richard Henry Dana, poet.
Grenville Mellen, author.
George Lunt, poet.
Richard Henry Wilde, editor.
Charles Sprague, poet.
Alfred Billings Street, author.
Horace Greeley, journalist. Founder and Editor of the New York Tribune.
Washington Allston, artist.
John Greenleaf Whittier, poet.
Charles Jacobs Peterson, author and publisher. Founded Peterson's Magazine.
Gulian Crommelin Verplanck, author and teacher .
R. T. Conrad, jurist.
P. P. Cooke, author.
Epes Sargent, author and editor. Editor of the Boston Transcript.
William Evans Burton, actor and humorist. Founded The Gentleman's Magazine.
David Paul Brown, author.
Prosper M. Wetmore, author.
Cornelius Mathews.
David Hoffman, jurist.
John Quincy Adams, statesman, Ex-President of the United States .
Oliver William Bourn Peabody, author.
Thomas R. Dew, poet.
J. Beauchamp Jones, author.
John Frost, historian.
Joseph Story, jurist.
G. William Cutter, poet.
Joseph Kirk Paulding, author.
Mrs. Rebecca S. Nichols, née Reed, authoress. Wrote as "Kate Cleveland.”
Henry Ware Jr., clergyman and author.
Charles Fenno Hoffman, author. Founded the Knickerbocker Magazine.
J. N. Reynolds.

[Lilly B · Rating 2 out of 5]

Poe is 19th century perez hilton/TMZ and you cant change my mind, what a little gossip fiend he was