Henry Theodore Tuckerman, Washington Irving's contemporary and fellow Knickerbocker, was a highly regarded romantic, idealistic critic during the mid-nineteenth century. Considered a genius in the United States, he also had a small but appreciative following in England. Additionally, he was included in Vapereau's Dictionnaire Universal of 1857 as one of America's better essayists. Evert A. Duyckinck, whose easygoing critical style was similar to Tuckerman's, pointed out in a laudatory essay in his Cyclopædia of American Literature (1855) that Tuckerman contributed "to all the best magazine literature of the day," including Walsh's Review, the North American Review, the Democratic, Graham's Magazine, the Literary World, the Southern Literary Messenger, and the Christian Examiner. As editor for the Boston Miscellany of Literature and Fashion in 1842-1843, Tuckerman exerted tremendous influence over what was considered publishable. For example, when Tuckerman refused to publish Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" in the Miscellany...