Poe's Quarrel with Boston Writers

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL & EDGAR ALLAN POE

Of all the New England writers Poe engaged as a critic, editor, or fellow author, James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) was most likely to become a friend. Like Poe, the younger Lowell dreamt of starting a literary magazine. Like Poe, he had limited success. Each of the three issues of Lowell's Pioneer prominently featured Poe's contribution, including the first publication of "The Tell-Tale Heart" which ran on the first page of the first issue in January 1843. Subsequent issues featured "Lenore" in February and "Notes Upon English Verse" in March.

In the fall and winter of 1842-43, Poe and Lowell exchanged warm letters relating to Lowell's magazine project. Calling Poe "almost the only fearless critic in America" (November 19, 1842), Lowell invited him to send imaginative stories and reviews but urged him to be "chary of wounding" the "tender feelings" of the writers reviewed. After the editor of another magazine declined to publish "The Tell-Tale Heart," Lowell declared that he was "very glad to get it for" his own publication (December 17, 1842). Six weeks later, prematurely celebrating the "triumphant debut of the 'Pioneer,'" Poe wrote, "I am delighted with [it]. I am especially gratified with what seems to me a certain coincidence of opinion & of taste, between yourself and your humble servant, in the minor arrangements, as well as in the more important details of the journal" (February 4, 1843).

The desperate financial condition of both of these author/editors is apparent in their correspondence. When his magazine failed, Lowell could not pay Poe the $10 owed for his work, which Poe at first declined to demand: "As for the few dollars you owe me–[Poe wrote] give yourself not one moment's concern about them. I am poor, but must be very much poorer, indeed, when I even think of demanding them" (March 27, 1843). But six months later, a desperate Poe wrote again, this time saying, "Since I last wrote you I have suffered much from domestic and pecuniary troubles, and, at one period, had nearly succumbed. I mention this by way of apology to the request I am forced to make–that you would send me, if possible, $10–which, I believe, is the amount you owe me for contribution" (September13, 1843).

Around this time, each was working on a biographical sketch of the other, and each provided information about his own life to the other. In response to a request from Lowell that he supply a "spiritual autobiography of yourself," Poe sent a revealing piece of self-description. It concluded, "I have been too deeply conscious of the mutability and evanescence of temporal things, to give any continuous effort to anything–to be consistent in anything. My life has been whim–impulse–passion–a longing for solitude–a scorn of all things present, in an earnest desire for the future" (July 2, 1844).

In the February 1844 issue of Graham's Magazine, Poe placed Lowell "at the very head of the poets of America," and praised one of Lowell's works ("Legend of Brittany") "as by far the finest poetical work, of equal length, which the country has produced." Lowell returned the compliment in the February 1845, issue of the same publication in which he called Poe "the most discriminating, philosophical, and fearless" American critic. "Mr. Poe [Lowell opined] has that indescribable something which men have agreed to call genius. No man could ever tell us precisely what it is, and yet there is none who is not inevitably aware of its presence and its power. Let talent writhe and contort itself as it may, it has no such magnetism." Around this time, Lowell helped Poe gain a position as an assistant editor of the Broadway Journal in New York. But this mutually beneficial relationship was damaged by Poe's relentless criticism of Longfellow and other writers (including Lowell himself!) and by Poe's Lyceum lecture and its aftermath.