Poe's Life in Boston

EDGAR ALLAN POE to ABIJAH METCALF IDE, Jr.
Autographed letter
October 19, 1843
[Full Text]

Defending art for art's sake and resisting strains of preachy didacticism, Poe developed his ideas about literature in response to opposing views�he associated with Boston writers and editors. Even in this generous and passionate outreach to motivate the literary aspirations of a young farmer and poet from South Attleborough, Massachusetts, Poe takes to task "the great usurper called Humbug" and "the Bobby Buttons [who] rule the world of American Letters." Elsewhere, in an August 1843 Graham's Magazine essay entitled "Our Amateur Poets," Poe explains that these are references to:

     ... the Boston critics, who have a notion that poets are porpoises, (for they are always talking about their running in 'schools,') cannot make up their minds as to what particular school he must belong.�We say the Bobby Button school, by all means. He clearly belongs to that. And should nobody ever have heard of the Bobby Button school, that is a point of no material importance. We will answer for it, as it is one of our own.

The Edgar Allan Poe Collection of Susan Jaffe Tane