SOURCE: Introduction to Selections from Poe's Literary Criticism, F. S. Crofts & Co., 1926, pp. vii-xix.

In the following essay, Moore argues that Poe's main ambition was to be a magazine proprietor. He therefore examines Poe primarily as a journalist who was committed to the growth of the American magazine culture and, through it, the construction of an American literary criticism distinct from the English critical tradition.

As soon as Fate allows I will have a magazine of my own, and will endeavor to kick up a dust.

—Poe to P. P. Cook, 1839.

I

That Poe was apparently first of all a journalist—neither a poet nor a writer of fiction—cannot well be doubted. Those of his contemporaries who knew him and left some record of their knowledge almost invariably owed their acquaintance with Poe to his journalistic activities of one sort or another. It is safest to say...