Edgar Allan Poe and His Nineteenth-Century American Counterparts

Winner of the 2019 Patrick F. Quinn Award for the best book on Poe (awarded by the Poe Studies Association) Edgar Allan Poe and His Nineteenth-Century American Counterparts addresses Poe's connections with, critical assessments of, borrowings from, and effect on his literary peers. It situates Poe within his own time and place, paying particular attention to his interactions with, and impact on, figures such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Harriet Jacobs, and Pauline Hopkins. John Cullen Gruesser rebuts myths that continue to cling to Poe, demonstrates Poe's ability to transform themes he encountered in the works of his literary contemporaries into great literature, and establishes the profound influence of Poe's invention of detective fiction on nineteenth-century American writers. Title Page Copyright Page Contents Permissions Acknowledgments Introduction: Dreams and Mystifications of Poe Part One: The Quixotic Quest for Literary Fame, Financial Stability, and a Republic of Letters in Antebellum America Chapter 1: Poor Edgar’s Almanac: E. A. Poe’s Money Woes Chapter 2: Outside Looking In: Poe and New York City Looking in on Gotham Letting Some Secrets of the New York Literati Out Inside and Out: Revenge in “The Cask of Amontillado” Chapter 3: Eddy P., the Scrivener: Biography and Autobiography in Herman Melville’s “Story of Wall-Street”1 Part Two: The Competition in Cunning: Ramifications of and Responses to Poe’s Ratiocinative Tales Chapter 4: Character Rivalry, Authorial Sleight of Hand, and Generic Fluidity in the Dupin Trilogy The Murders in the Rue Morgue The Mystery of Marie Rogêt The Purloined Letter Chapter 5: Varieties of Detection in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Walt Whitman’s Life and Adventures of Jack Engle, Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno, and Mark Twain’s “The Stolen White Elephant” Roger Chillingworth: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Malevolent, Deluded Detective Successfully Combating Crime in Walt Whitman’s Jack Engle Amasa Delano: Herman Melville’s Anti-Dupin Mark Twain’s Purloined Critter Chapter 6: Madness, Mystification, and “Average Racism” in “The Gold-Bug,” E. D. E. N. Southworth’s The Hidden Hand, Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and Pauline Hopkins’s Hagar’s Daughter Uniting a Divided Country by Means of “Average Racism” in “The Gold-Bug” and The Hidden Hand Hiding in Plain Sight and Reversing the Rendering of Black and White Speech in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Countering the Unexpiated National Sin of “Average Racism” in Hagar’s Daughter Coda: “A Crime of Dark Dye”: Misreading Poe’s Criticism Notes Introduction: Dreams and Mystifications of Poe Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Coda: “A Crime of Dark Dye”: Misreading Poe’s Criticism Index "Edgar Allan Poe and His Nineteenth-Century American Counterparts addresses Poe's connections with, critical assessments of, borrowings from, and effect on his literary peers. It situates Poe within his own time and place, paying particular attention to his interactions with, and impact on, figures such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Harriet Jacobs, and Pauline Hopkins. John Cullen Gruesser rebuts myths that continue to cling to Poe, demonstrates Poe's ability to transform themes he encountered in the works of his literary contemporaries into great literature, and establishes the profound influence of Poe's invention of detective fiction on nineteenth-century American writers."--Bloomsbury Publishing. "Situates Poe within, and reads his texts in relation to, the economic, literary, and racial milieu of the antebellum United States"-- Provided by publisher