Poe's Quarrel with Boston Writers

Cornelia Wells Walter (Editor)
"A Failure"
The Evening Transcript, October 17, 1845

On the day after Poe's Lyceum performance, Cornelia Wells Walter (1815-1898) offered the first of many critical observations her newspaper would publish in the weeks that followed. After suggesting that Poe's insistence that poetry should not be didactic was delivered in a "didactic" manner, Walter went on to report that "the audience listened in amazement to the singularly didactic exordium, and finally commenced the noisy expedient of removing from the hall."

American Antiquarian Society, Worcester Massachusetts