Nevermore:
The Edgar Allan Poe Collection of Susan Jaffe Tane

Edgar A. Poe delivered a remarkable lecture on American poets and poetry last evening, at the Society Library. It embodied much acute and fearless criticism, with some that did not strike us so favorably. The worst portion of the lecture was the introduction, wherein Mr. P. indulged in indiscriminate and often unjust censure on whatever has hitherto aspired to be criticism in this country, whether in the shape of Reviews, Magazines, or Newspapers, Etc. etc. Mr. Poe writes better than he reads. His Lecture gained nothing from the graces of his elocution, and in one or two instances we thought the Poet suffered more from his recitation of their verses than from his most savage criticism. Etc. etc.

An hour’s lecture on this subject by Mr. Poe is but a ’foot of Hercules,’ and though one can see what would be the proportions of the whole, if treated with the same scope and artistic minuteness, it is a pity to see only the fragment. What we heard last night convinced us, however, that one of the most readable and saleable of books would be a dozen such Lectures by Mr. Poe, and we give him a publisher’s counsel to print them . . . Mr. Poe had an audience of critics and poets—between two and three hundred of victims and victimizers—and he was heard with breathless attention. He becomes a desk,—his beautiful head showing like a statuary embodiment of Discrimination; his accent drops like a knife through water, and his style is so much purer and clearer than the pulpit commonly gets or requires, that the effect of what he says, besides other things, pampers the ear.

This is Poe’s own copy of his most philosophically ambitious work. More than three quarters of the pages in this copy contain Poe’s own notes and corrections. Poe believed this “prose poem” to be a major contribution to literary criticism and philosophical understanding; he proposed a run of 50,000 copies, but just 500 were printed. Writing to his friend George Eveleth about the book, Poe declared, “What I have propounded will (in good time) revolutionize the world of Physical and Metaphysical Science.” No one could accuse him of excessive modesty.

Poe’s extensive notes and corrections in this copy reflect his intentions to produce a second edition. But it was not to be; he died the following year.

Bayard Taylor submitted a letter to the July 15 issue of the Saturday Evening Post mentioning several forthcoming books, including “Poe’s prose-poem ’Eureka,’ in which his new theory of the universe will be revealed. Whether the readers of the work will echo its title, on perusal, is a question to be decided; but many, I have no doubt, will answer with the Raven: ‘Nevermore!’”