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Christopher North and the Genesis of the Raven
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
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.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1951
References
1 (Boston, 1917), pp. 246–259.
2 xxv (Nov. 1857), 334–335: “The Raven—By Edgar A. Poe.” That Thompson, who edited the Messenger in 1857, was the author of this article is established by the fact that he incorporated a small portion of it in a subsequent work, The Genius and Character of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. James H. Whitty and James A. Rindfleisch (privately ptd., 1929).
3 xx, 129; also Complete Works of Poe, ed. James A. Harrison (New York, 1902), xi, 63. Harrison's edition is hereafter referred to as Works.
4 Barnaby Rudge (London, 1892), p. 603 (a reprint by Macmillan of the 1st ed., 1841). 5 Works, xiv, 205.
6 Memorabilia Fragmenta of Thomas Dunn English, p. 89 (typescript). These reminiscences were selected and prepared for publication by the late Arthur H. Noll, English's son-in-law and literary executor. They were made available to me through the kindness of the late William Southworth Hunt of South Orange, New Jersey.
7 Op. cit. (n. 2), p. 333.
8 xxv, 21.
9 “Our Book-Shelves”, The Arislidean, i (Nov. 1845), 400. The book of Miss Barrett's to which English refers is The Drama of Exile, and Other Poems. “Lady Geraldine's Courtship” is one of the poems included in the volume.
10 Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, xxv (March 1829), 377–379.
11 Although the Ettrick Shepherd addresses the parrot rather than the raven as “sir, or madam”, the probability of Poe's having borrowed the expression is by no means lessened by this fact. In “The Philosophy of Composition” Poe states that after he had determined upon the necessity of a “non-reasoning creature capable of speech” in order to account for the monotonous repetition of a single word, “very naturally, a parrot, in the first instance, suggested itself, but was superseded forthwith by a Raven, as equally capable of speech, and infinitely more in keeping with the intended tone” (Works, xiv, 200). It is probable that Poe was having a little fun at the expense of his prospective readers in intimating that he had considered, even for an instant, the possibility of adapting a parrot to the needs of his poem.
12 All quotations from Poe's first review of Barnaby Rudge are from a photostat of the original in the Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post of 1 May 1841, courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass.
13 Blackwood's, xxv (March 1829), 379 (italics mine).
14 Life of Poe (Boston and New York, 1909), ii, 111–112.
16 “Noctes Ambrosianae. No. xlvii”, Blackwood's, xxvi (Dec. 1829), 845–878, esp. 853. The italics are mine.
16 The essays had originally appeared in various numbers of Blackwood's. Although 1842 is the date on the title page of each of the 3 volumes of these essays, the edition was ready for sale by 22 Nov. 1841. It was favorably noticed in the Philadelphia Pennsyhanian of this date (p. 2, col. 1).
17 xx, 72. Poe wrote the review before the end of 1841. By 29 Dec. 1841 the Jan. (1842) number had already appeared, for it was noticed in the Philadelphia Public Ledger of this date (p. 2, col. 5). Although Harrison did not reprint the review in his edition of Poe's works—presumably because of its brevity—he included it in his bibliography of Poe's writings (Works, xiv, 366).
18 Wilson, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, iii, 172–219. This essay first appeared in Blackwood's Magazine, xx (Nov. 1826), 657–680.
19 See Mary Gordon, ‘Christopher North,‘ a Memoir of John Wilson (New York, 1863), p. 92; also Mrs. Gordon's quotation from De Quincey in a note on the same page.
20 See Campbell's discussion of the date of composition of The Raven in his notes to The Poems, pp. 246–247.
21 John L. Knapp, The Journal of a Naturalist (Philadelphia, 1831), p. 126.
22 For a possible specific source of Poe's “Take thy beak from out my heart” and of his subsequent observation that the Raven's “eyes have all the seeming of a demon's”, see “Noctes Ambrosianae. No. xxrv”, Blackwood's, xix (Feb. 1826), 223. Here the Ettrick Shepherd, in discoursing rhapsodically on the “King o' the Vultures” (the eagle), says: “He has a hideous head of his own,—jiendlike eyes—nostrils that woo the murky air, —and beak fit to dig into brain and heart” (my italics). In “The Philosophy of Composition” Poe refers to the figure of the Raven's beak in the lover's heart as “the first metaphorical expression in the poem” (Works, xiv, 208). The metaphorical suggestiveness of a savage bird's feeding upon the human heart seems to have appealed to Poe. Cf. the following lines from his Sonnet—To Science (1829) :
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?