Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor: A Book for Young AmericansCody, Sherwin
History
Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor: A Book for Young Americans
Cody, Sherwin
Authors, American; Irving, Washington, 1783-1859; Lowell, James Russell, 1819-1891; Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849; Taylor, Bayard, 1825-1878
Later he had an interest in a paper called _The Broadway Journal_.
When it was about to cease publication Poe bought it himself for fifty
dollars, giving a note which Horace Greeley endorsed and finally paid.
Once a young man wrote to Greeley, saying, "Doubtless among your
papers you have many autographs of the poet, Edgar Allan Poe," and
intimated that he should like to have one of them. Greeley wrote back
that he had just one autograph of Poe among his papers; it was
attached to a note for fifty dollars, and Greeley's own signature was
across the back. The young man might have it for just half its face
value.
But after Poe bought _The Broadway Journal_ he had no money to carry
it on, and its publication was soon suspended.
He earned his livelihood mainly by writing stories or articles for
various magazines and papers, which paid him from $5 to $50 each. It
was a hand to mouth way of living, for he was often, often
disappointed.
In 1845, a volume entitled, "Tales. By Edgar A. Poe," was published by
Wiley and Putnam, and in the same year "The Raven and Other Poems"
appeared in book form from the same publishing house. Poe also
delivered lectures, and by way of criticism carried on what was called
the "Longfellow War." Though he considered Longfellow the greatest
American poet, he accused him of plagiarism, or stealing some of his
ideas, which was very unjust on the part of Poe. Hawthorne and Lowell
he praised highly.
After the death of his wife, Poe was very melancholy. He went to
lecture, and to visit friends in Providence, Rhode Island, and in
Lowell, Massachusetts, and afterward went south to Richmond, where he
planned to raise enough money by lecturing to start _The Stylus_.
He was hospitably entertained in Richmond, and became engaged to marry
his boyhood's first love, Miss Royster, now the widow, Mrs. Shelton.
Their marriage was to take place at once, and Poe started north to
close up his business in New York and bring Mrs. Clemm south. In
Baltimore it seems that he fell in with some politicians who were
conducting an election. They took him about from one polling place to
another to vote illegally; then some one drugged him, and left him on
a bench near a saloon. Here he was found by a printer, who notified
his friends, and they sent him to the hospital, where he died on the
7th of October, 1849. He was nearly forty-one years old.
Poe had a great and wonderful mind. In the latter part of his life he
gave much of his time to a book called "Eureka," which was intended to
explain the meaning of the universe. Of course he was not a
philosopher; but he wrote some things in that book which were destined
afterward to be accepted by such great men as Darwin and Huxley and
many others.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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