The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 58, July 1954 - April, 1955 Page: 459
650 p. : ill., maps (some col.), ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Book Reviews
plains that Poe's admirers have tried to belittle their "pet," their
"hero," into a "plaster saint," thereby doing more injury to
truth than was ever done by Griswold.
Lindsay does not claim that his study contributes anything
new: "It makes no claim to original research. Living in England
as I do, such research would be impossible. Besides, I doubt if
there is anything further to be discovered about Poe." He implies
that he has done considerable reading in the books on Poe,
but unfortunately he found Joseph Wood Krutch's book "en-
tirely convincing" and Marie Bonaparte's work partly so-both
of the Freudian school-whereas it would have shown far better
judgment to rely heavily on such biographical and critical studies
as those of G. E. Woodberry, Killis Campbell, Hervey Allen,
Margaret Alterton and Hardin Craig, Norman Foerster, J. A.
Harrison, Una Pope-Hennessey, Arthur Hobson Quinn, and
Haldeen Braddy. It seems likely that he did rely on Quinn for
many of his facts, highly praising Quinn's scholarship, but then
he makes some comments on Quinn's excellent biography that
are entirely unjust and inaccurate.
Lindsay is an incompetent critic of Poe's poetry and of his
non-fiction prose. He refers to the early poem To Helen as "the
one poem that approaches pure poetry" and he believes that
The Haunted Palace is another poem that deserves to be included
in anthologies, but he ridicules The Raven, The Bells, and most
of the other poems and insists that Poe was no poet: "Through
prose alone was Poe to reveal his genius; his verse remained
mainly adolescent and derivative, but poetically of small value."
He even believes, or at least says, that Poe would have been for-
gotten long ago if he had written only verse.
He admits that Poe was a great editor as evidenced by the
rapid increase in circulation of the magazines which he edited
without completely controlling, but he is convinced that Poe
could never have succeeded as editor of his own magazine be-
cause of his enmities, jealousies, and slashing attacks upon nearly
all other important American writers, especially the popular
ones. He does not specifically analyze Poe's work as a critic but
implies that it was mainly logrolling, flattery of attractive women
poets, or malicious and unjust attacks upon successful writers
whom he envied.459
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 58, July 1954 - April, 1955, periodical, 1955; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101158/m1/528/?rotate=270: accessed April 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.