SOURCE: Hammond, J. R. “The Poetry.” In An Edgar Allan Poe Companion, pp. 157-59. Totowa, N.J.: Barnes & Noble Books, 1981.

In the following excerpt, Hammond highlights the aspects of Poe's personal life that were reflected in the themes and tone of “The Raven,” and asserts that Poe's original inspiration for the poem originated with a book review of Barnaby Rudge that the poet wrote in 1841.

‘The Raven’, the poem by which Poe is most renowned in the English-speaking world, owed its origins to a review of Barnaby Rudge which he composed for Graham's Magazine (February 1841). In the course of this review he commented significantly on the symbolical importance of the raven in Dickens's novel:

The raven, too, intensely amusing as it is, might have been made, more than we now see it, a portion of the conception of the fantastic Barnaby. Its croakings might have been prophetically heard...