This section contains 4,696 words (approx. 16 pages at 300 words per page) |
![]() |
SOURCE: Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Philosophy of Composition.” In Literary Criticism of Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Robert L. Hough, pp. 20-32. Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1965.
In the following essay, which is believed to have been originally delivered as a lecture by Poe in 1845, the poet discusses the process of composition that resulted in “The Raven.”
Charles Dickens, in a note now lying before me, alluding to an examination I once made of the mechanism of “Barnaby Rudge,” says—“By the way, are you aware that Godwin wrote his ‘Caleb Williams’ backwards?1 He first involved his hero in a web of difficulties, forming the second volume, and then, for the first, cast about him for some mode of accounting for what had been done.”
I cannot think this the precise mode of procedure on the part of Godwin—and indeed what he himself acknowledges, is not...
This section contains 4,696 words (approx. 16 pages at 300 words per page) |
![]() |