we had been under the spell of some wizard”), the few left by the end were only mollified by a recitation of “The Raven.” Boston newspapers did not fondly recall Poe afterwards, and the feeling was mutual.
Returning home, he found the Broadway Journal in such dire straits that he bought out his partner for fifty dollars—though even that was borrowed—and promptly used its pages to jeer at his Boston audience. He claimed, not quite convincingly, that the reading was another of his delightful hoaxes, this time on the fools in Boston’s literary establishment.
“The Bostonians are well in their way,” Poe wrote mockingly. “Their hotels are bad. Their pumpkin pies are delicious. Their poetry is not so good.” Just to rub it in, he added that “Al-Aaraaf” was written at the age of ten. After scolding half the Boston audience for rudely leaving during the lecture, he mocked the remainder for being hoaxed by a juvenile production, and “applauding, all those knotty passages which we ourselves have not yet been able to understand.”
That did not keep Poe from including “Al Aaraaf” in The Raven and Other Poems when it arrived in bookstores several weeks later. While self-deprecation was the norm in prefaces of the time, Poe’s went further than most: “I think nothing in this volume of much value to the public,” he stated flatly. The claim is only half true; a volume containing “The Raven” and “The Valley of Unrest” is hardly valueless. But to goose the manuscript up to book length, Poe had indeed resorted to larding in juvenilia like “Tamerlane” and “Al Aaraaf” and failed experiments like “Scenes from Politian ”; he had given so little thought to saving the latter production that he had to borrow back issues of Southern Literary Messenger just to transcribe it.
The volume was received politely enough, though with much puzzlement over the juvenilia. Margaret Fuller, as ever,was one of the first out of the gate, with an assertion that “The Raven” alone was a masterpiece, while the other poems showed an unrealized potential—“the productions in this volume indicate a power to do something far better.”
Certainly Poe’s fiction continued from strength to strength; even as reviews of his poetry came in, the American Review carried his minor science fiction hoax “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,” a sly account of hypnotic suspended animation that was gullibly reprinted as a fact in both America and Britain. But as gratifying as the poetry reviews and the Valdemar reprints were, Poe had little time to take notice; for over at the Broadway Journal offices, his business was taking on water.
It was a cruel irony. After years of trying to start Penn and The Stylus , living the dream of having his own publication entirely overwhelmed Poe: underfunded and lacking copy, he desperately heaved in book excerpts and uncredited repeats of his own more obscure short stories. A young Walt Whitman visited the office and found Poe “very kindly and human, but subdued, perhaps a little jaded”—and happy to run Whitman’s piece on music in the November 29 issue. Poe praised it in print by announcing “we agree with our correspondent throughout,” some of the first praise that Whitman received from a major literary figure.
But what Poe needed above all was money. A scant five weeks into his ownership, he sold off half the publication to a partner. Poe drank through the holidays and left the next issue with an entire column blank—the editor’s equivalent of giving up on life. By January 3, 1846, his partner had enough and declared the paper over.
That day found Poe at home—two books, one famous poem, and a wrecked magazine away from where he’d been a year earlier. He was famous, jobless, drunk. Musing over a letter that had come in with yet another cryptogram—readers still tormented Poe with them—he turned from the sodden puzzleof his own life to the one on the page
Returning home, he found the Broadway Journal in such dire straits that he bought out his partner for fifty dollars—though even that was borrowed—and promptly used its pages to jeer at his Boston audience. He claimed, not quite convincingly, that the reading was another of his delightful hoaxes, this time on the fools in Boston’s literary establishment.
“The Bostonians are well in their way,” Poe wrote mockingly. “Their hotels are bad. Their pumpkin pies are delicious. Their poetry is not so good.” Just to rub it in, he added that “Al-Aaraaf” was written at the age of ten. After scolding half the Boston audience for rudely leaving during the lecture, he mocked the remainder for being hoaxed by a juvenile production, and “applauding, all those knotty passages which we ourselves have not yet been able to understand.”
That did not keep Poe from including “Al Aaraaf” in The Raven and Other Poems when it arrived in bookstores several weeks later. While self-deprecation was the norm in prefaces of the time, Poe’s went further than most: “I think nothing in this volume of much value to the public,” he stated flatly. The claim is only half true; a volume containing “The Raven” and “The Valley of Unrest” is hardly valueless. But to goose the manuscript up to book length, Poe had indeed resorted to larding in juvenilia like “Tamerlane” and “Al Aaraaf” and failed experiments like “Scenes from Politian ”; he had given so little thought to saving the latter production that he had to borrow back issues of Southern Literary Messenger just to transcribe it.
The volume was received politely enough, though with much puzzlement over the juvenilia. Margaret Fuller, as ever,was one of the first out of the gate, with an assertion that “The Raven” alone was a masterpiece, while the other poems showed an unrealized potential—“the productions in this volume indicate a power to do something far better.”
Certainly Poe’s fiction continued from strength to strength; even as reviews of his poetry came in, the American Review carried his minor science fiction hoax “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,” a sly account of hypnotic suspended animation that was gullibly reprinted as a fact in both America and Britain. But as gratifying as the poetry reviews and the Valdemar reprints were, Poe had little time to take notice; for over at the Broadway Journal offices, his business was taking on water.
It was a cruel irony. After years of trying to start Penn and The Stylus , living the dream of having his own publication entirely overwhelmed Poe: underfunded and lacking copy, he desperately heaved in book excerpts and uncredited repeats of his own more obscure short stories. A young Walt Whitman visited the office and found Poe “very kindly and human, but subdued, perhaps a little jaded”—and happy to run Whitman’s piece on music in the November 29 issue. Poe praised it in print by announcing “we agree with our correspondent throughout,” some of the first praise that Whitman received from a major literary figure.
But what Poe needed above all was money. A scant five weeks into his ownership, he sold off half the publication to a partner. Poe drank through the holidays and left the next issue with an entire column blank—the editor’s equivalent of giving up on life. By January 3, 1846, his partner had enough and declared the paper over.
That day found Poe at home—two books, one famous poem, and a wrecked magazine away from where he’d been a year earlier. He was famous, jobless, drunk. Musing over a letter that had come in with yet another cryptogram—readers still tormented Poe with them—he turned from the sodden puzzleof his own life to the one on the page
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