Search After Truth

by Thomas Holley Chivers

Reprint of 1848 edition. Bound with The Lost Pleiad (1845) and Atalanta (1853). Introduction by Charles M. Lombard.

24 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1976

About the author

Thomas Holley Chivers (October 18, 1809 – December 18, 1858) was an American doctor-turned-poet from the state of Georgia. He is best known for his friendship with Edgar Allan Poe and his controversial defense of the poet after his death.

Though Chivers built up a mild reputation during his lifetime, counting Algernon Charles Swinburne among his admirers, his fame faded away quickly after his death. Other writers that acknowledged his influence included Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Michael Rossetti. Others, however, were more critical. One anonymous reviewer, possibly Evert Augustus Duyckinck, joked that Chivers was formulaic and suggested the formula included 30% Percy Bysshe Shelley, 20% Poe, 20% "mild idiocy", 10% "gibbering idiocy", 10% "raving mania" and 10% "sweetness and originality". Literary scholar S. Foster Damon wrote that Chivers would have had a stronger reputation if he were born in the North and "the literary coteries there would surely have pruned and preserved him... But the time and space were against him.