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The works of the late Edgar Allan Poe (1853)
The works of the late Edgar Allan Poe - 1853 Author:Edgar Allan Poe Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. PREFACE. Hithkrto I have not written or published a syllable upon the subject of Mr. Pole's life, character, or genius, fhtc I was in... more »formed, some ten days after hie death, of my appointment to be his literary executor. I did not oppose I was debarred from the expression of any feelings or opinions in the case by the acceptance of this vmce, the duties of which I regarded as simply Ihe collection of his works, and their publication, for the benefit of the rightful inheritors of his property, in a furm and manner that would probably have been moet agreeable to his own wishes. I would gladly have declined a trust imposing so much labor, for I had been compelled by ill health to solicit the indulgence of my publishers, who hr.d many thousand dollars invested in an unfinished work under my direction; but when I was told bv several of Mr. Fob's most intimate friends—among others by the family of S. D. Lewis, Esq., to whom in his last years he waa under greater obligations than to any or to 11 others—that he had long been in the babit of expressing a desire that in the. event of hie death 1 should be his editor, I yielded to the apparent necessity, and proceeded immediately with the preparation of the two volumes which have heretofore been published. But 1 had, at the request of the Editor of "The Tribune," written hastily a few paragraphs about Mr. Pok, which appeared in that paper with the telegraphic communication of his death; and two or three of these paragraph's having been quoted by Mr. N. P. Willis, in his Notice of Mr. Po, were as a part of that Notice unavoidably reprinted in the volume of the deceased author's Tales. And my nneonsidered and imperfect, but, as every one who knew its subject readily perceived, very kind article, wns now vehemently att...« less