Chapter 4 - Reception

Summary

From his time to ours, reception of Poe has been mixed. The persistent attempts to see his personal life and his writings as inextricably linked have been the informing spirit in many biographical accounts and in certain critical approaches, whether the topic encompasses just one work or a plurality. Poe himself initiated some of the misleading biographical accounts, first in the information he provided for Griswold's The Poets and Poetry of America (1842, often reprinted), a long-respected anthology of American verse. Even longer, the sketch in the Philadelphia Saturday Museum (1843) was based on materials supplied by Poe to Henry B. Hirst. Although that piece contains significantly revised texts for some of Poe's poems, it is not wholly reliable in sections of what might be thought factual biography. Poe also sent material that contained inaccuracies to James Russell Lowell for a biographical essay in the February 1845 Graham's Magazine. If these articles were favorable portrayals of Poe, Griswold's maligning portraiture in his obituary notice, signed “Ludwig,” of Poe in the 9 October 1849 New York Daily Tribune and in the expanded memoir in his edition of Poe's Works (1850–56) seemed to take a stronger hold on public opinion. Griswold's deviousness went long unsuspected because he did present what he considered to be the best texts for Poe's poems and fiction, though not for some of the “Literati” papers and for Poe's letters.