SOURCE: "Edgar Allan Poe," in Classic Americans: A Study of Eminent American Writers from Irving to Whitman, Russell & Russell, Inc., 1959, pp. 263-307.

In the following essay, Canby argues that Poe's egomania combined with his interest in contemporary scientific thought can help to explain the uneven nature of his critical writings. While Poe was logical when delineating general literary principles, Canby maintains, his self-obsession made his critique of specific authors arbitrary and unreliable.

To leave the society of Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau for the Philadelphia, the New York, the Rich mond, of Poe is to pass from a quiet village of philosophic Greeks to an active, hustling present, from retirement out of space, and often out of time, to the more familiar world that lives in the moment. And to leave these men for Poe is to exchange elevation for intensity, and the study of man for the practice...