Editorial Notice

critical-historicalnature, expressedhispersonalviewpoints . Finally, although I would not dismiss the opinions on Poe advanced by KevinJ. Hayes, for whose work I have great respect, we are not all bound to reach the same conclusion about what we read. Walsh’s scholarship has previously been called into question, and I will thus let my opinion of his book stand unchanged. EDITORIAL NOTICE Memories of Richard P. Benton With the death of Richard P. Benton in December 1999,PoeStudies/DarltRomanticismlosta much-valued editorialboard member, one who had been with the journal since its founding by G. R.Thompson as the Poe Nmsletterin 1968. One of the Newsletter’soriginal four editorialboard members,ProfessorBenton contributed “Poe’s ‘The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether’: Dickens orWillis?”to its inaugural issue and the first of his very detailed “EdgarAllan Poe: Current Bibliography” series to the second volume in 1969.A future issue of thejournal will feature a listing of his many Poe publications, aswell as the early, ground-breakingsymposia in which his editorial labors shaped a generation of Poe criticism: “NewA p proaches to Poe” (Emerson Society Quarter&, 1970), “TheGothicTraditionin Nineteenth-CenturyAmerican Literature” (ESQ:AJournal o f theAmericanRenaissance ,1972),“PoeasLiteraryCosmologer:Studieson Eureka”(American TranscendentalQuarter&,1975,and TranscendentalBooks, 1975),and “Journeyinto the Center: Studiesin Poe’s Qm” (AmericanTranscendental Quarterly, 1978). The following remembrances stresspersonal interactionwith a teacher and scholar who gave generouslyof himself to so many of us who work on Poe. FromJ. Lasley Dameron, ProfessorEmeritus, Department o f English, University of Memphis: Professor Benton’s contributions to Poe scholarship are well known.His attention to Poe extends from annotated checklistsof contemporarycriticism to an analyticalstudyofEureka I met ProfessorBenton over thirty years ago when I attended a gathering of professorsof American literature in the home of Professor Eric Carlson at Storrs, Connecticut. It was at this meeting that we discussed, among a variety of matters , severalviable ways to encourage current scholarship on Poe. Eventually,issues of the Poe Nmsletter (nowPoe Studies/Darlt Ro~antzc~m) appeared,and in 1972,the Poe StudiesAssociationwas organized,with itsPSANmsletter(nowthe EdgarAllanPoeRe0k-z~) and regularly scheduled meetings and panels.Attending 85 this gathering of congenial college English professors was a rare privilege beyond what any of us actually realized at the time, for much of today’s scholarly attention to Poe can be traced in part to this socia1event . found satisfylngfor both intellectual and economic reasons. During the last decades of his life, I had the pleasure ofmeetingwith him regularlyat Trinity (only twenty-five miles from Storrs), after which we withdrew to one of his favorite restaurants for lunch or In issue one of the 1969volume of the Poe Newsletter , Professor Benton compiled the first current checklist of Poe criticism,a feature that continues to this day in various issues of Poe Studies/Dark Romanticism -just one example of the influence of his early leadership in Poe scholarship. My first and lasting impression of ProfessorBenton was that he exemplified the gentlemanly qualities of an ideal scholar. From Eric W Carlson, Professor o f English Emeritus, Universityo f Connecticut: My mostvivid recollection of Dick Benton dates back to 1974when he invited Ben Fisher, me, and Tohru Nakamura (avisitingJapanese Poe scholar who was in the process of acquiring numerous copies of Poe documents at the University of Connecticut library under my guidance) tojoin him for a drink and conversation at his home in West Hartford. When my Introduction to Poe: A Thematic Reader had been p u b lished several years earlier, I remember that Benton strongly urged me to continue my inquiry into Poe’s “metaphysic,”which was something I intended to do and have done. A few years later, however, his proposals for “NewApproaches to Poe: A Symposium” (EmersonSociety Quarterly, 1970) revealed a decided preference for existentialism. I regret not asking Benton in 1974 how he defined Poe’s philosophic perspective.The question of Poe’s Platonism did not come up, although Benton’s “Platonic Allegory in Poe’s ‘Eleonora”’had addressed the matter in 1967 (Nineteenth-CenturyFiction). Few Poe scholars of his generation had a clearer conception of Poe’s metaphysic , or a wider bibliography thereof. From Dick’s frequently expressed admiration for Leo Spitzer, I gathered that he studied Poe under him...