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Edgar Allan Poe Manuscript Donated to The New York Public Library's Berg CollectionNew York, October 7, 2000 -- An eight-page manuscript of Edgar Allan Poe's (1809-1849) essay "A Reviewer Reviewed," written in his own hand, has been donated to The New York Public Library's Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature by Professors Burton R. and Alice M. Pollin of Bronxville, N.Y. The gift is announced today, October 7, to commemorate the 151st anniversary of Poe's death. Accepting this generous gift, Library President Paul LeClerc noted, "The manuscript offers a glimpse of a great writer unsparingly evaluating his own work. It is a welcome and important addition to the Berg Collection's holdings of Poe manuscripts and printed editions." He continued, "I have known and admired the Pollins for more than 20 years. They are marvelous scholars, and now they are wonderful benefactors of our Library." In "A Reviewer Reviewed," Poe, writing under the pseudonym "Walter G. Bowen," praises himself briefly and with restraint, acknowledging his "scholarship" and "analytic talent." But most of the piece is devoted to sharp and occasionally humorous self-criticism. Primarily, Poe takes himself to task for being too severe a critic of others' literary efforts, pointing out the flaws in his own diction, grammar, and syntax. He also faults himself for "wilful and deliberate literary theft," setting passages from his poetry beside the models he imitated. These include poems by Thomas Moore, Alexander Pope, and Lydia Sigourney, Poe's contemporary and one of the first American women to have a commercially successful literary career. The accusation of plagiarism was particularly brave since, in 1839, Poe had notoriously savaged Longfellow for imitating Tennyson. The unfinished and undated essay, which Poe composed probably in 1848 or 1849 and which he signed as the pseudonymous "Bowen," had been intended for publication in Graham's Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine (Philadelphia), as is clear from the manuscript's heading. It remained unpublished until 1896, when it appeared as a syndicated article in the New York Journal and other newspapers. Poe is considered one of America's most important writers. His work is pervaded by a mysterious, dreamlike, and often macabre quality, and it influenced such diverse authors as Swinburne, Tennyson, Dostoyevsky, Conan Doyle, and the French symbolists. His tale, The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841), was the precursor of the modern detective story. In addition, with his analytical mind and witty approach, Poe became a respected and feared literary critic, who often theorized about the art of writing. The Berg Collection contains most of the first and early editions of Poe's works, including the first edition of The Ravenand Other Poems (New York, 1845) and two of the thirteen known extant copies of the first edition of Tamerlane and Other Poems (Boston, 1827). It also houses a small group of Poe manuscript correspondence and poems. The Pollins,
who gave the manuscript to the Library, have deep roots in New York City
academia. Burton R. Pollin is a former Chair of the English Department
in New York's Brandeis High School and is Professor Emeritus of
English at the City University of New York. Alice M. Pollin is Professor
Emeritus of Spanish Literature at New York University. Upon his retirement,
Burton Pollin was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, one of more than twenty-five
grants he has received in recognition of his Poe scholarship. He has published
135 articles on Poe and has edited five volumes of the Collected Writings
published by Gordian Press. Mr. Pollin was a frequent user of the
Berg Collection and other divisions of The New York Library, "to which
I owe so many debts of scholarship," and is gratified that it will be
the manuscript's new home. The collection's more than 35,000 printed items and 115,000 manuscripts cover the entire range of two national literatures with particular emphasis on the nineteen and twentieth centuries. The two earliest books in the Berg Collection are chronicles printed by William Caxton in 1480, and the earliest manuscript is a contemporary transcription of John Donne's poems dating from 1619. Among the division's holdings are rarities considered museum pieces by the book world, including the two copies of Edgar Allan Poe's Tamerlane; manuscripts of T.S. Eliot's early poems and the original typescript of The Waste Land; the holograph diaries of Virginia Woolf; the Bristol edition of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads; Robert Browning's Pauline; the literary archive of Fanny Burney, including Evelina, Cecilia, and Camillain manuscript and her diary and letters as prepared for the press; and first editions of the works of Dr. Johnson, Sterne, Smollett, Sheridan, Burns, Blake, Defoe, Swift, Addison and Steele, Richardson, and Fielding. The Berg Collection houses important holdings of such writers as Washington Irving, Nathaniel and Sophia Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Emily Brontë, Lewis Carroll, Rudyard Kipling, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The twentieth century is represented by strong holdings in Arnold Bennett, Joseph Conrad, T. S. Eliot, George Gissing, Thomas Hardy, James Joyce, John Masefield, Eugene O'Neill, George Bernard Shaw, Virginia Woolf, W. H. Auden, and Jack Kerouac. As a research collection, the Berg Collection's primary focus is the acquisition of works of modern and contemporary writers. In recent years, the division has added to its collection the archives of such noteworthy writers as Vladimir Nabokov, W. H. Auden, Robert Graves, Jean Garrigue, Muriel Rukeyser, May Sarton, Philip Levine, Kenneth Koch, and Paul Auster. ### RCorben: pro |