The Literary Retrospect: Poe and Graham's Magazine

William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), who in early youth wrote anonymously a political satire, "The Embargo," was the first American poet of note. His stately hymn in blank verse, "Thanatopsis," which appeared in the North American Review in 1817, was a wonderful masterpiece of precocity, and won him an audience in England. Wordsworth is said to have learned the poem by heart, and in dignity of verse and majesty of style it is still to be recognized as one of the poetical masterpieces of the time.

As Bryant may be regarded as the pioneer American poet, and Irving as the pioneer essayist and man of letters, so James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) may be styled the first American novelist of true distinction. He is one of the world's great story-tellers, whose defects of style are abundantly compensated by the invention of his narrative in plot and incident. He became, furthermore, the first voice of primeval America, of her virgin wilderness, and her aboriginal children. He created the Indian as a life-size figure of literature, impressive even if idealized. And as he originated the novel of the forest, so to a certain extent he originated the novel of the sea.

In those days it was necessary for professional men of letters to adopt, as Bryant did, the bread winning employment of the newspaper. Literature as a profession did not really exist, and such giants of literary genius as Poe and Hawthorne, not to mention Lowell and others, belonged to a generation of poorly paid Bohemians. In the early forties two Philadelphia magazines began to pay their contributors with what was then thought to be a princely munificence. Godey's Lady's Book, which had the chief financial success among the Philadelphia magazines, had succeeded Dennie's Port Folio in the fine personnel of contributors. It began in July, 1830, and its circulation grew several years later to 150,000 a month, largely due to its colored fashion plates. Some-what dimmed by the prismatic colors of the fashions, some of the earliest compositions of Poe, Holmes, Lydia H. Sigourney, Frances S. Osgood, Longfellow, Bayard Taylor, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, appeared in this magazine. Its chief rival was the Gentleman's Magazine, which George R. Graham, in 1841, purchased from William E. Burton the actor, and renamed simply Graham's Magazine. "There is one thing more," said Burton, after concluding the sale. "I want you to take care of my young editor." The "young editor" was Poe. Later Rufus Wilmot Griswold, of unpleasant notoriety later, sat in the editorial chair, and Lowell assisted Poe. Longfellow's "Spanish Student," Cooper's "Jack Tier," and some of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Twice-told Tales" appeared in its pages. The Cary Sisters, Charles Fenno Hoffman, Thomas Dunn English, N. P. Willis, W. W. Story, E. P. Whipple contributed to it. Among the last were Bayard Taylor and C. Godfrey Leland. N. P. Willis established the American Monthly Magazine and wrote popular books of verse and society sketches.

In the Bohemian world of literary newspapers and magazines, Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) found his destiny cast. He was born in Boston, but he never belonged there, though his first volume, "Tamerlane and Other Poems," bore on its title-page the words, "By a Bostonian." His father was a penniless actor, and had married an actress. Early deprived of both parents, Poe was adopted by Mr. Allan, a wealthy merchant of Richmond, Va. He drank and gambled, ran in debt, indulged in perverse pride, and was finally disowned by his adoptive father, who had tried to make a soldier of him at West Point. Turning to literature for support, Poe won a prize of $100 offered by a weekly paper for a story. His contribution was "The Manuscript Found in a Bottle." Being brought to the notice of John P. Kennedy, he was made editor of the Southern Literary Messenger, at Richmond. He married his cousin, Virginia Clenn, in 1836, and a year later went, first to New York, and then to Philadelphia, where he was editor of the Gentleman's Magazine, afterwards Graham's Magazine. He published "Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque" (1839), which gave him renown as a prose writer. They were soon translated into French, and since that time Poe's popularity in France has exceeded that of any other American writer. Such combination of mathematical and imaginative powers is unknown elsewhere in all the range of literature. There is an exquisite fascination and enchanting melody in his verse that seems beyond the reach of calculating art.