Poe and the Printed Word (review)

It would appear that Poe was well positioned as an editor and reviewer on several literary magazines in Richmond, Philadelphia, and New York to be affected by and, in turn, affect American print culture during its development in the 1830s and 1840s. Kevin J. Hayes’s Poe and the Printed Word addresses the interrelationship between print culture and Poe’s development as a writer sensitive to this emerging culture. At times, however, Hayes is limited by his subject matter, which leads him to fall back on unproductive speculation. Hayes assumes a great deal a posteriori, and I sometimes found his reflections on Poe’s thoughts and feelings intrusive and irritating. Hayes’s attributions are often simplistic, too; for example, as Poe walks home from the banquet of New York booksellers and publishers, a jingoistic affair held on 30 March 1837, we are asked to imagine a scene in which Poe “could not help but feel good about his decision to come to New York” (57). Yet virtually nothing is known about Poe’s role at the banquet, other than the fact that he made a brief, self-serving toast to “the Monthlies of Gotham.”

Puzzling, too, is Hayes’s choice to pass over virtually without comment Poe’s important role as editor of the Southern Literary Messenger while including a chapter on Poe’s library, which Hayes admits might be a “misnomer,” as, he concedes, most of Poe’s books, acquired largely through his position as a reviewer, were sold at secondhand stores (xv). In addition to addressing the relationship of Poe to contemporary print culture, Hayes’s book announces itself as a “focused biography” (xii), but there is no coherent sense of chronology to orient the casual reader, nor does Hayes seem much concerned with biographical details. Hayes also states that his study can be read as an overview of Poe’s writing, yet his focus throughout is clearly selective, and some readings taken as definitive (for example, his reading of “A Descent into the Maelstr–m” as a displaced tale of the American West) are ultimately puzzling.

Although the book does not always accomplish its announced objectives, as an overview of American print culture during its formative years Poe and the Printed Word offers much of value, including an enlightening chapter on the rise of the pamphlet novel and a highly relevant analysis that draws on Donald H. Reiman’s distinction between private, confidential, and public documents to explore the use of autograph and manuscript verse as social capital. (Here Hayes is able to locate Poe explicitly within contemporary American print culture.) As such, Poe and the Printed Word may be a useful text for book historians and theoreticians, but it will likely frustrate more than fulfill the needs of both the general Poe reader and the Poe scholar.