As an aftermath of a popularity which, in addition to being immediate and widespread, has proved to be enduring, there now exists a rather formidable mass of controversial writing having to do with the genesis of The Raven and consequently with the sources that Poe may have used in creating the poem. The late Killis Campbell, in his scholarly notes to The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, has left us a concise critical estimate of most of this controversial matter.1 Some accounts of the origin of The Raven are quite fantastic, and Campbell dismisses them with little comment as apocryphal. Others he considers not wholly convincing although he does not deny that they may contain at least a modicum of truth.