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The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq.
"The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq." is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe.
First published December 1, 1844
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62 people want to read
About the author
Edgar Allan Poe
9,979 books28.9k followersThe 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...
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...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 45 reviews
December 9, 2021
Quite sure this is my least favorite thing I’ve read by Poe. It was a whole bunch of nonsense and wasn’t funny in the least. I much prefer his horror and poetry to these humor stories I’m reading.
October 29, 2023
- قد تكون هذه القصة قريبة من قصة ادغار الشخصية، خصوصاً في جزئية الوالد وطريقة التعاطي معه. اما الباقي فهو مضحك في الأسلوب والنقد الضمني الذي قام به ادغار بو للصحف ولطريقة المساومة مع الكتاب والعلاقة بين رؤساء التحرير (وهذا يشبه واقعنا العربي الحالي لحد كبير!!)...
December 10, 2021
*3.5
Edgar Allan Poe can be humourous???
Edgar Allan Poe can be humourous???
November 9, 2020
3.5 Stars
rounded up to 4 Stars.
"The tale is one of Poe's most highly autobiographical and ironical sketches. He returns to the scenes of his youth in Richmond in this thinly disguised satire of his conversations with John Allan [Poe's foster father] about a literary future, and in incidents that reflect his life in Richmond and around the warehouse of Ellis & Allan, the mercantile company co-owned by Allan. Poe may have taken special pleasure in publishing the story first in a Richmond publication. . . . In a speech on literary fame in the final paragraphs of the story, Poe speaks through Thingum Bob to candidly reveal his own experiences in the periodical world and to express frustrations that he often felt in their dealings with contributors. 'Look at me!-how I labored-how I toiled-how I wrote! Ye Gods, did I not write? I knew not the word 'ease.' By day I adhered to my desk, and at night a pale student. I consumed the midnight oil. You should have seen me-you should.' " Sova, Dawn B. (2001). Edgar Allan Poe, A to Z : the essential reference to his life and work. New York: Checkmark Books. (137)
The above quote from Poe within the final paragraphs of his tale eloquently sums up Poe's inner frustrations within a humorous satirical piece, hence a taste of his black humor.
"The tale is one of Poe's most highly autobiographical and ironical sketches. He returns to the scenes of his youth in Richmond in this thinly disguised satire of his conversations with John Allan [Poe's foster father] about a literary future, and in incidents that reflect his life in Richmond and around the warehouse of Ellis & Allan, the mercantile company co-owned by Allan. Poe may have taken special pleasure in publishing the story first in a Richmond publication. . . . In a speech on literary fame in the final paragraphs of the story, Poe speaks through Thingum Bob to candidly reveal his own experiences in the periodical world and to express frustrations that he often felt in their dealings with contributors. 'Look at me!-how I labored-how I toiled-how I wrote! Ye Gods, did I not write? I knew not the word 'ease.' By day I adhered to my desk, and at night a pale student. I consumed the midnight oil. You should have seen me-you should.' " Sova, Dawn B. (2001). Edgar Allan Poe, A to Z : the essential reference to his life and work. New York: Checkmark Books. (137)
The above quote from Poe within the final paragraphs of his tale eloquently sums up Poe's inner frustrations within a humorous satirical piece, hence a taste of his black humor.
October 22, 2013
A wordy story again. I did not really follow the bulk of it because I just did not care about the story line that much. Usually when Poe is trying to be funny, I do not really like the story. I am all about his creepiness.
September 5, 2025
Note finale : 3.5/5
Lu dans le recueil "La Chute de la Maison Usher et autres histoires extraordinaires" des éditions RBA coleccionables.
Vingt-troisième et dernière nouvelle du recueil. Encore une nouvelle humoristique dans laquelle il semblerait qu'Edgar Poe règle des comptes avec le milieu journalistique et littéraire. Alors c'est un peu gênant de le voir laver son linge sale comme ça, surtout avec autant d'ironie, y a un côté puéril mais c'est suffisamment drôle pour être quand même agréable à lire.
Lu dans le recueil "La Chute de la Maison Usher et autres histoires extraordinaires" des éditions RBA coleccionables.
Vingt-troisième et dernière nouvelle du recueil. Encore une nouvelle humoristique dans laquelle il semblerait qu'Edgar Poe règle des comptes avec le milieu journalistique et littéraire. Alors c'est un peu gênant de le voir laver son linge sale comme ça, surtout avec autant d'ironie, y a un côté puéril mais c'est suffisamment drôle pour être quand même agréable à lire.
July 14, 2020
قصة "سنغوم بوب" الصحفي الذي شق طريقه بصعوبة كما هو حال الكثير من صحفيينا اليوم :)
قصة رمزية ساخرة وماكرة.
قصة رمزية ساخرة وماكرة.
August 15, 2023
Very funny. A story that satirizes literary magazines, their editors, and their contributors in an absurd manner.
This story connects with numerous other critiques of these magazines. For example, one major critique that Washington Irving had of the literary circles of America (in his Buckthorne stories) is that they were insular: these circles would praise only those from within them and disparage all those without the group. Poe gives this critique more cynicism; in this story, not only are these groups insular, but moving from one to the other is painless. Going from one magazine to the next magazine is enough to make one a partisan of the new magazine. The ability for Thingum Bob to gain an inflated ego and to hate other magazines (magazines he had previous admired) is of course evidence of this.
Money is also important to the story. The Lollipop, the magazine Bob first writes for, is unwilling to pay him; remunerations cause the editor to go into a frenzy, almost to beat him (perhaps to death). Bob himself buys all the magazines, centralizes them, and creates the one magazine to rule them all; the magazine in which all the material from each is presented in one. One might say that this centralization is the pinnacle of Poe's exaggeration, for it is at this point that his critique--(namely, that these news organizations publish inflated and false reviews, often at a profit)--hits the furthest it can go: a completely top-down system of control, accountable to nobody (not even competitors), and entirely able to make up public opinion at will.
It must also be stated that Bob beats his father (I don't know if to death or not) at the behest of the editor of the Lollipop. The use of violence to remove enemies is not mentioned again (at least, not openly), but we can see the effect of the greed in this manner.
This story connects with numerous other critiques of these magazines. For example, one major critique that Washington Irving had of the literary circles of America (in his Buckthorne stories) is that they were insular: these circles would praise only those from within them and disparage all those without the group. Poe gives this critique more cynicism; in this story, not only are these groups insular, but moving from one to the other is painless. Going from one magazine to the next magazine is enough to make one a partisan of the new magazine. The ability for Thingum Bob to gain an inflated ego and to hate other magazines (magazines he had previous admired) is of course evidence of this.
Money is also important to the story. The Lollipop, the magazine Bob first writes for, is unwilling to pay him; remunerations cause the editor to go into a frenzy, almost to beat him (perhaps to death). Bob himself buys all the magazines, centralizes them, and creates the one magazine to rule them all; the magazine in which all the material from each is presented in one. One might say that this centralization is the pinnacle of Poe's exaggeration, for it is at this point that his critique--(namely, that these news organizations publish inflated and false reviews, often at a profit)--hits the furthest it can go: a completely top-down system of control, accountable to nobody (not even competitors), and entirely able to make up public opinion at will.
It must also be stated that Bob beats his father (I don't know if to death or not) at the behest of the editor of the Lollipop. The use of violence to remove enemies is not mentioned again (at least, not openly), but we can see the effect of the greed in this manner.
February 25, 2022
I liked this. It was kind of strange, in that I didn't really get whether the narrator literally made his mark by writing that two-line poem, or if the actual thing (Ode to Oil-of-Bob) was a more full-length poem. Anyway, I liked it how Poe ridicules the bias methods and attitudes the publishing companies showed toward upcoming writers; satirically demonstrating this by habing the narrator being constantly dismissed and criticized when writing under one certain (unsuccessful) name, and then posting the exact same story under his more popular alias. Overall, while this story wasn't anything special, it was nice to read something a bit more comical (though equally as cynical) than his usual stuff.
October 9, 2020
Cuento de notorias características satíricas de esos que Poe utilizaba para arremeter contra sus enemigos literarios.
Se burla de todo y de todos y, aunque inventa los nombre de los directores de distintos diarios, uno de ellos era real (dirigía el Knickerboarder Magazine) y el dardo envenenado va hacia él en forma encubierta.
Se burla de todo y de todos y, aunque inventa los nombre de los directores de distintos diarios, uno de ellos era real (dirigía el Knickerboarder Magazine) y el dardo envenenado va hacia él en forma encubierta.
October 23, 2020
Oppodeldoc viz. opodeldoc is a soap and alcohol based, usually camphorated, liniment aka the nostrum "Oil-of-Bob", a patent medicine. The books which Bob copied the excerpts from and signed Oppodeldoc are, besides Dante's Inferno (where 'Ugolino' della Gherardesca features prominently): Paradise Lost, and The Iliad, respectively. A poetaster is someone who writes inferior poetry. Tapis is an archaic word for tapestry or in this case rug. Argent comptant is French for cash. Thingum Bob is a play on thingamabob and was the "large tin pepper-castor with longitudinal holes" which was used to produce the insipid advertising poetry. Rem is Latin for business, quocunque is Latin for whatever, and modo is Latin for now. "Kickapoo" refers to an assortment of nostrums, such as Kickapoo Indian Sagwa (9.5% alcohol).
March 18, 2022
This is the story of a self entitle brat who thinks he is the greatest poet around. He writes a crappy article for a newspaper and demands money for it. Then a bunch of other boring stuff happens. I think Poe was making fun of the newspaper industry or something, but I was too bored to care. It also may be semi-autobiographical, but like I said, I was too bored to care. Stick to the grotesque and arabesque, Ed!
September 20, 2015
A funny stab at literary editors and similar types who want the position without having earned it. I can see how this satire would be pretty amusing in its day.
April 7, 2020
I have arranged my takeaway thoughts into a haiku:
"How hollow boats shift
On currents made up of praise,
Thinking it well done."
"How hollow boats shift
On currents made up of praise,
Thinking it well done."
April 2, 2020
Reasonably funny, but aspects of it haven’t aged well.
May 11, 2020
I’d like to imagine how much shorter and to the point this story would have been without the phrase ‘Oppodeldoc (whoever he is).’
June 26, 2022
غريب إن إدجار ألان بو يكتب حاجة ساخرة
September 5, 2020
Another funny entry. All of the names in here are so incredibly absurd. I enjoyed all the trickery and subterfuge to gain poetic credibility.
December 2, 2020
Had its funny moments, but overall it wasn't a very great story.
March 18, 2023
More silly Poe. This one's taking the piss out of literary magazines. A rather easy target. it's pretty funny, but not as funny as it thinks it is.
May 8, 2024
It's hysterical, if you know Homer, Dante and Milton and are familiar with Poe's experiences with editors 🤣. Otherwise it probably seems incomprehensible.
I'll admit, I apparently read an abridged version that stops after the narrator was congratulated on his doggerel poem by all the editors. Having read the second half, i dropped it to 4*. Apparently, the editor of my collection didn't consider the 2nd half of the story part of Poe's greatest works.
If a genius writes something incomprehensible to you, it's probably not the genius that has made a mistake. Most of the negative comments make it clear the poster didn't understand the context or the literary references.
At least one person conceded it may "not have aged well," but I would clarify that it hasn't aged well for the average current reader of Poe's tales.
It was satire, but to understand it requires context and a some knowledge of classic (pre-1800) literature.
It regarding what he considered to be idiocy of the magazine editors of the time. To see if the editors would catch it, he plagiarized from the great writers of history and sent them in as his own work. Little did he expect that not only they wouldn't *recognize* Dante (Inferno) & Homer (Iliad), Milton (Paradise Lost) three of the greatest writers in history, but they would indicate that only the worst magazines would publish such writing. (I'll admit that I missed the Paradise Lost reference initially)
Then, seeing just how ridiculous the editors were, he sent them a two-line nonsense verse and they praised it as wonderful and put it on the front page!
I will also admit that I didn't understand the significant of his pseudonym, so I didn't "get" all of it either.
I'll admit, I apparently read an abridged version that stops after the narrator was congratulated on his doggerel poem by all the editors. Having read the second half, i dropped it to 4*. Apparently, the editor of my collection didn't consider the 2nd half of the story part of Poe's greatest works.
If a genius writes something incomprehensible to you, it's probably not the genius that has made a mistake. Most of the negative comments make it clear the poster didn't understand the context or the literary references.
At least one person conceded it may "not have aged well," but I would clarify that it hasn't aged well for the average current reader of Poe's tales.
It was satire, but to understand it requires context and a some knowledge of classic (pre-1800) literature.
It regarding what he considered to be idiocy of the magazine editors of the time. To see if the editors would catch it, he plagiarized from the great writers of history and sent them in as his own work. Little did he expect that not only they wouldn't *recognize* Dante (Inferno) & Homer (Iliad), Milton (Paradise Lost) three of the greatest writers in history, but they would indicate that only the worst magazines would publish such writing. (I'll admit that I missed the Paradise Lost reference initially)
Then, seeing just how ridiculous the editors were, he sent them a two-line nonsense verse and they praised it as wonderful and put it on the front page!
I will also admit that I didn't understand the significant of his pseudonym, so I didn't "get" all of it either.
August 17, 2023
The hero of the novel is a half-wit convinced of his own genius. He manages to make a huge journalistic career using (sometimes by accident, sometimes intentionally) the rivalry between well-known magazines.
I have noticed that this story is not very popular, and it is often criticized as unfunny and outdated. I'm surprised because I personally like it a lot.
Many mechanisms described in this story are most present in today's media, especially in social media
- Hiring a professional hater (yes, it happens, I was offered such a job myself)
- Creating texts using content generators (the hero of the story pours sentences cut out from books on a piece of paper covered with glue. Now we have more modern methods)
- Ridiculing the texts of unknown authors and then praising them when it turns out that someone popular created them. (One can post one comment twice: as someone anonymus and as a celeb to see what happens)
- Using sponsored articles for creating positive image
- Promoting untalented people just because it's to our advantage
I have noticed that this story is not very popular, and it is often criticized as unfunny and outdated. I'm surprised because I personally like it a lot.
Many mechanisms described in this story are most present in today's media, especially in social media
- Hiring a professional hater (yes, it happens, I was offered such a job myself)
- Creating texts using content generators (the hero of the story pours sentences cut out from books on a piece of paper covered with glue. Now we have more modern methods)
- Ridiculing the texts of unknown authors and then praising them when it turns out that someone popular created them. (One can post one comment twice: as someone anonymus and as a celeb to see what happens)
- Using sponsored articles for creating positive image
- Promoting untalented people just because it's to our advantage
December 24, 2024
This short story once again finds us in the mind of Poe. What a very unique place it must have been. A bit of a history buff myself I find myself thinking of life in a certain time period while reading a story. The names for the publications in this story while they weren't as unusual as they could've been were nonetheless unique. I personally think they would've been more effective if they were spelled in French as the story did after all take place in Paris. The story as a whole really doesn't move fast at all and I found myself many time falling asleep ( as is the case with most of Poe's short stories) the only saving grace of the story and the reason for my three star review comes in the very last paragraph. This as a writer I believe could sum up one's very existence.
October 3, 2025
Complete waste of time.
Not worth reviewing.
For the moment at least.
It’s public domain. You can find it HERE.
-----------------------------------------------
PERSONAL NOTE :
[1844] [20p] [Horror] [0] [Not Recommendable]
-----------------------------------------------
Completa pérdida de tiempo.
No vale la pena reseñarlo.
Al menos por ahora.
Es dominio público, lo pueden encontrar ACA.
-----------------------------------------------
NOTA PERSONAL :
[1844] [20p] [Horror] [0] [No Recomendable]
-----------------------------------------------
Not worth reviewing.
For the moment at least.
It’s public domain. You can find it HERE.
-----------------------------------------------
PERSONAL NOTE :
[1844] [20p] [Horror] [0] [Not Recommendable]
-----------------------------------------------
Completa pérdida de tiempo.
No vale la pena reseñarlo.
Al menos por ahora.
Es dominio público, lo pueden encontrar ACA.
-----------------------------------------------
NOTA PERSONAL :
[1844] [20p] [Horror] [0] [No Recomendable]
-----------------------------------------------
June 1, 2024
FULL REVIEW ON MY WEBSITE
https://thebookcornerchronicles.com/2...
This short story is a little wordy story, which i don’t mind but i’m not a huge fan of.
The writing style was pretty okay but Edgar Allan Poe was able to much better work than what he did here.
I had again hard time connecting with the story. So again a low rating is in order.
This short story needs to get points for having some funny moments but there weren’t a lot of them.
The story in this short story was far from great. Its a bit of a disappointment if you are an Edgar Allan Poe like me.
https://thebookcornerchronicles.com/2...
This short story is a little wordy story, which i don’t mind but i’m not a huge fan of.
The writing style was pretty okay but Edgar Allan Poe was able to much better work than what he did here.
I had again hard time connecting with the story. So again a low rating is in order.
This short story needs to get points for having some funny moments but there weren’t a lot of them.
The story in this short story was far from great. Its a bit of a disappointment if you are an Edgar Allan Poe like me.
November 21, 2022
Like many other Poe stories, this one was probably best appreciated by his contemporaries. It deals with the career of a fictional poet/magazine editor, who somehow found his claim to fame by publishing a half-assed poem. Even without proper context, the joke is pretty obvious; Poe is mocking the publishing industry of his day. It is kinda funny in parts, and I really like the narrator’s pompousness. Unfortunately, the story does drag near the end.
June 15, 2020
I would rate it a 3.5. If you are familiar with Poe and his relationships to the various Baltimore literary journals and perhaps a writer yourself, this and How to Write a Blackwood Article are absolutely hysterical! But "Thingum Bob" isn't as screwball mad cap as "Blackwood," but it's humor might be a little more nuanced but just as hysterical!
August 23, 2024
It still amazes me how many different things Poe writes about, even though he's known for horror. This is the exact opposite of horror. Humor, satire, really it's just downright silly. A slight on the chronicles of the day, a man talks of being a writer. Not one of my favorites, although if you like humor, it's really quite funny.
September 4, 2024
I'm not certain if this is a story which comes to every author where they make fun of their work in some way with a very short story which say much of nothing to me. While it is written well and has the usual author's narrative... the meaning is missing. Did I just miss Poe's intention? I don't know.
June 16, 2022
Man Poe despised editors and critics... quite old-fashioned satire with some parts that made me smirk.
I would say the "Thomas Hawks" still have jobs today, and you're probably scraping the bottom of the barrel as a writer today as well. Some things don't change.
I would say the "Thomas Hawks" still have jobs today, and you're probably scraping the bottom of the barrel as a writer today as well. Some things don't change.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 45 reviews