The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe; Volume 9

by Edgar Allan Poe, Charles F. Richardson

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.

This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.

Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface.

We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

452 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1902

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]

Eureka: A Prose Poem - 3.5 Stars

MISCELLANIES
Maelzel's Chess-Player - 5 Stars
Philosophy of Furniture - 4 Stars

A Chapter on Autography - 5 Stars Included the following Literati:
Charles Anthon
Washington Irving
Park Benjamin
John P. Kennedy
Grenville Mellen
J. K. Paulding
Mrs. L. H. Sigourney
Robert Walsh
J. H. Ingraham
W. C. Bryant
Fitz-Greene Halleck
N. P. Willis
Rufus Dawes
H. W. Longfellow
Rev. J. Pierpont
W. Gilmore Simms
Rev. Orestes A. Brownson
Judge Beverly Tucker
John Sanderson
Miss H. F. Gould
C. S. Henry
Mrs. Emma C. Embury
Miss Eliza Leslie
Joseph C. Neal
Seba Smith
Lieutenant Alexander Slidell
Francis Lieber
Mrs. Sarah J. Hale
Edward Everett
Dr. Robert M. Bird
John Neal
Miss C. M. Sedgwick
J. Fenimore Cooper
Dr. F. L. Hawks
Henry Wm. Herbert
J. G. Palfrey
F. W. Thomas
R. M. Morris
Ezra Holden
Geo. R. Graham
Colonel W. L. Stone
Jared Sparks
H. S. Legare
George Lunt
Jos. R. Chandler
H. T. Tuckerman
L. A. Godey
John S. Du Solle
J. S. French
Theo. S. Fay
Dr. J. K. Mitchell
General G. P. Morris
G. H. Calvert
J. McJilton
W. D. Gallagher
Rich. H. Dana
Mr. McMichael
N. C. Brooks
Rev. Thos. H. Stockton
C. W. Thomson
Rev. W. E. Channing
L. A. Wilmer
J. E. Dow
H. Hastings Weld
M. St. Leon Loud
Pliny Earle
David Hoffman
S. D. Langtree
Judge R. T. Conrad
President J. Q. Adams
P. P. Cooke
J. Beauchamp Jones
W. E. Burton
Richard Henry Wilde
Lewis Cass
James Brooks
Jack Downing-Seba Smith
J. R. Lowell
L. J. Cist
T. S. Arthur
Jas. E. Heath
Thos. H. Chivers
Judge Joseph Story
J. Frost
James F. Otis
J. N. Reynolds
David Paul Brown
Mrs. E. C. Stedman
John G. Whittier
Mrs. Ann S. Stephens
Chas. Sprague
Cornelius Mathews
C. Fenno Hoffman
Horace Greeley
Prosper M. Wetmore
Henry Ware
William B. O. Peabody
Epes Sargent
Washington Allston
Alfred B. Street
R. Penn Smith
Dr. O. W. Holmes
Bishop G. W. Doane
Albert Pike
Dr. James McHenry
R. S. Nichols
Richard A. Locke
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Cryptography - 5 Stars
Anastatic Printing - 5 Stars
Some Secrets of the Magazine Prison-House - 4 Stars

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

The overall rating of this book Volume IX titled Criticisms is 5 Stars in that it provides invaluable sources of Edgar Allan Poe's critical writings of which as time has proven he was indeed an excellent critic. "Among Poe's ideas of literary criticism was the belief that a work should be reviewed for its own worth, and that non-literary criteria like a writer's background or social status should be irrelevant. Over a century later, literary critics such as Allen Tate, John Crowe Ransom, and R.P. Blackmur adopted the same approach." https://www.nps.gov/articles/poe-lite....
My individual ratings of each piece are my own feelings and personal likes of how I reacted to the critiques of each individual.


The Literati: (continued from Vol. 8)
Christopher Pearce Cranch - 4 Stars
Sarah Margaret Fuller - 5 Stars
James Lawson - 3 Stars
Carolyn M. Kirkland - 4 Stars
Prosper M. Wetmore - 3 Stars
Emma C. Embury - 3 Stars
Epes Sargent - 3.5 Stars
Frances Sargent Osgood - 4 Stars
Lydia M. Child - 3 Stars
Thomas Dunn Brown (English) - 3.5 Stars
Elizabeth Bogart - 3 Stars
Catherine M. Sedgwick - 4 Stars
Lewis Gaylord Clark - 4 Stars
Anne C. Lynch - 3.5 Stars
Charles Fenno Hoffman - 4.5 Stars
Mary E. Hewitt- 4 Stars
Richard Adams Locke - 5 Stars
Estelle Anna Lewis - 4 Stars
James Russell Lowell - 3.5 Stars
Bayard Taylor - 4.5 Stars
Elizabeth Frieze Ellett - 2.5 Stars
Henry B. Hirst - 4 Stars [This] "notice of Hirst by Poe was included by Griswold in volume III of The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe (p. 212). This article, which Poe may have intended should never be published, . . . accused Hirst of plagiarism in the poem Penance of Roland. https://www.eapoe.org/people/hirsthb.htm

William Wallace - 3 Stars
E. P. Whipple and other Critics - 4 Stars
Joel T. Headley - 4 Stars

Pinakidia - 3 Stars
Marginalia - 3 Stars
Fifty Suggestions - 3 Stars

[Caroline]

I actually listened to an audio recording called volume 9 of Poe’s works, and have no idea of whether the content is the same as this book. The audio contained Julius Rodman, the Balloon Hoax, Hans Pfaall, and a couple of others.