E. H. N. Patterson via Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore |
PUTNAM"S MONTHLY:— Dix & Edwards, N. Y. Terms: $3 per annum; the Monthly & Household Words $5; the Monthly or Household Words, with the School fellow $3.50; all three $5.50.
The December number of this leading Magazine is before us. The contents embrace nineteen choice articles, and copious Editorial Notes. As articles especially pleasing we may enumerate "How I came to be married," "The Virginia Springs," "Low Life in the Sahara," "The Green Lakes of Onondaga," and "Benito Cereno." The latter is concluded in this number; and is the best tale we have read for a long time—the style and manner of the lamented POE are closely imitated. The literature of Putnam is of the highest order, and has gained it a lofty position. For the coming year, the publishers promise an increasing excellence in every department, but we can assure the public that it is good enough now.
-- Oquawka Spectator & Keithsburg Observer, December 7, 1855.
Later, the influence of Poe on the book version of "Benito Cereno" was suggested in a review of The Piazza Tales that appeared in the New York Dispatch on June 8, 1856. For the New York reviewer, "Benito Cereno"
"opens with a mysticism which reminds us of Edgar Poe's prose tales, and this mysticism is admirably preserved, even deepening in every character to the end, when all appears as clear as the sun at noon-day."
Accessible online via genealogybank.com, the New York Dispatch review of The Piazza Tales is helpfully transcribed in Herman Melville: the Contemporary Reviews, edited by Brian Higgins and Hershel Parker (Cambridge University Press, 1995) at page 477.
New York Dispatch - June 8, 1856 |
E. H. N. Patterson's "youthful" and "ardent" fascination with Poe is discussed by Mary E. Phillips in Edgar Allan Poe, the Man Volume 2 (John C. Winston Co., 1926) at page 1401:
September, 1835, J. B. Patterson, of Winchester, Va., settled at Oquawka, Ill. A year later, joined by his wife and son—Edward H. N. Patterson, a young man of literary taste and ability—the elder Patterson founded the weekly Oquawka Spectator. Prudently reared in all ways, and in constant touch with the best books and magazine literature, Edward H. N. Patterson came of age January, 1849. Then his father turned over to him the management of the Spectator and its job-printing office. Full of youthful confidence, he cherished the ambition of making a name in the world of letters. Among those who stood for conspicuous eminence in American literature of that time was Edgar Allan Poe, who, as a journalist, young Patterson had followed from Editor Poe's Southern Literary Messenger days to the passing on of his Broadway Journal, with fascinated admiration for the poet's genius. For Poe's endless and varied adversities, Patterson felt and expressed an ardent sympathy. Thereby and then, he was moved, December, 1848, to make to Poe a letter appeal to come West and join him in a new periodical venture.For more on the younger Patterson's unrealized scheme to engage Edgar Allan Poe as editor of a new literary journal in Oquawka, check out
- M. D. McElroy, “Poe's Last Partner: E. H. N. Patterson of Oquawka, Illinois.” Papers on Language & Literature 7 (Summer 1971): 252-71.
https://www.proquest.com/openview/d6bb3b3fb0956e49e02496436f34e2a7/
05 May 1880, Wed The Rock Island Argus (Rock Island, Illinois) Newspapers.com
Related post:
- Benito Cereno in Louisville
https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2020/11/benito-cereno-in-louisville.html
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