Edgar Allan Poe - How to know him

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Edgar Allan Poe - How to know him (1921)
by Charles Alphonso Smith
3599497Edgar Allan Poe - How to know him1921Charles Alphonso Smith

EDGAR ALLAN POE

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VOLUMES IN THIS SERIES

Published and in Preparation

Edited by Will D. Howe


Arnold Stuart P. Sherman
Browning William Lyon Phelps
Burns William Allan Neilson
Carlyle Bliss Perry
Dante Alfred M. Brooks
Defoe William P. Trent
Dickens Richard Burton
Emerson Samuel McChord Crothers
Hawthorne George Edward Woodberry
The Bible George Hodges
Ibsen Archibald Henderson
Lamb Will D. Howe
Stevenson Richard A. Rice
Tennyson Raymond Macdonald Alden
Whitman Brand Whitlock
Wordsworth C. T. Winchester

Edgar A Poe
Edgar A Poe

EDGAR ALLAN POE

HOW TO KNOW HIM


By

C. ALPHONSO SMITH

Head of the Department of English
in the United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland
Former Edgar Allan Poe Professor of English
in the University of Virginia


Author of

WHAT CAN LITERATURE DO FOR ME?
O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY, ETC.


WITH PORTRAIT


INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Copyright 1921

The Bobbs-Merrill Company


Printed in the United States of America


PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOK MANUFACTURERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.

To

ARCHIBALD HENDERSON SCALES, REAR ADMIRAL, UNITED STATES NAVY, SUPERINTENDENT OF THE UNITED STATES NAVAL ACADEMY

and

ARCHIBALD HENDERSON, HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS, UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED IN TOKEN OF SINCERE FRIENDSHIP
AND IN MEMORY OF STIMULATING COMRADESHIP

CONTENTS


chapter
page
I
The World-Author
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
1
 
Biography—Centennial—Russia—Germany—Italy—Spain—Latin-America—France—England—Retrospect and Prospect.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    
II
The Man
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
26
 
Relation to Time and Place—Accurate Observer—Interest in Public Education—Slavery—Alleged Sectionalism—Americanism—Humor—At Home—Religion—Intemperance—Not the Poet Laureate of Darkness.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    
III
The CriticIntroduction
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
73
 
"The Faculty of Identification"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
76
 
"The Novel as History and Philosophy"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
78
 
"An Omen of Better Days for Southern Literature"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
80
 
"Comparison vs. Ideality"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
82
 
"A Present Tense Wrongly Used"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
93
 
"The Spirit of Research in Our Navy"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
94
 
"Government and the Forms of Government"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
97
 
"William Cullen Bryant"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
98
 
"Indefinitiveness in Song"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
106
 
"Fancy and Imagination"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
110
 
"The Nature and Interest of Plot"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
116
 
"Defects in the Technique of Barnaby Rudge"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
124
 
"Longfellow's Ballads"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
142
 
"The Technique of the Short Story"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
149
 
"Repetition an Aid to Quaintness"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
158
 
"Shelley and After"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
160
 
"Plagiarism"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
163
 
"How to Improve Our Drama"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
166
 
"German Criticism"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
171
 
"The Technique of The Raven"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
173
 
"A Long Poem a Contradiction in Terms"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
190
 
"The Heresy of the Didactic"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
194
 
"Poetical Themes"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
199
IV
The PoetIntroduction
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
202
 
"To Helen"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
210
 
"Israfel"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
211
 
"The City in the Sea"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
212
 
"The Coliseum"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
214
 
"To One in Paradise"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
215
 
"The Haunted Palace"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
216
 
"The Conqueror Worm"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
217
 
"The Raven"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
220
 
"Ulalume—A Ballad"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
225
 
"The Bells"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
228
 
"For Annie"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
231
 
"Annabel Lee"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
234
 
"Eldorado"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
236
V
The Writer of Short StoriesIntroduction
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
238
 
"Ligeia"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
245
 
"The Purloined Letter"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
266
VI
The FrontiersmanIntroduction
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
293
 
"Shadow—A Parable"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
296
 
"Silence—A Fable"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
299
 
"The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
305
 
"The Island of the Fay"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
313
 
"The Colloquy of Monos and Una"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
320
 
"The Power of Words"
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
333
 
Index
....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
343

PREFACE

Poe has suffered a strange fate. Nobody ever doubted his genius, but his genius has clouded and rendered spectral and remote his personality. He is popularly regarded as a manufacturer of cold creeps and a maker of shivers, a wizened, self-centered exotic, un-American and semi-insane, who, between sprees or in them, wrote his autobiography in The Raven and a few haunting detective stories. This book is an attempt to substitute for the travesty the real Poe, to suggest at least the diversity of his interests, his future-mindedness, his sanity, and his humanity. Old-world voices are requisitioned to speak for him, and he in turn through the wide gamut of his work is permitted to speak for himself.

C. A. S.

United States Naval Academy,

Annapolis, Maryland


This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.


The longest-living author of this work died in 1924, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 99 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.

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