The Boston Quarrels of Edgar Allan Poe
Did Edgar Allan Poe, the notable 19th century poet and prose writer, call Boston "Frogpondia" and the Bostonians "Frogpondians"? He did, and it was one of the colorful attributes of his literary feud with Boston, one in which he engaged with both well-known and obscure writers and, to an extent, with the whole city. Was this moniker a one-time occurrence? What did he mean when he called them the Frogpondians (a reference to the Boston Frog Pond), and who exactly was he referring to? What was the origin of his flippant nature towards Boston?
When one thinks of Poe and geography, one mainly thinks of Baltimore, a city with which he affiliated himself and where he was buried. But Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston on January 19, 1809, to parents who were actors. His mother in particular had a storied history on the Boston stage, and a fondness for Boston that she desired to pass along to Edgar. Upon the back of a watercolor she once painted of Boston, she wrote, “For my dear little son, Edgar, who should love Boston the place of his birth, and where his mother found her best and most sympathetic friends.”[1] The family moved to Virginia shortly thereafter, but Poe would return to Boston again as a young man seeking publication in the city known as the publishing hub of America. He was also enlisted in the Army, stationed at Fort Independence in Boston Harbor. His collection Tamerlane and Other Poems was published in 1827 in Boston, with the notation "By a Bostonian" as its only clue to an author. There's no other record that Poe lived in Boston at any other time in his life, though he traveled to Boston and New England frequently for lectures and visits.
I’m somewhat of a Boston literary history buff, so I knew that a letter containing Poe’s reference to the Frogpondians is located at the Boston Public Library, and was part of an exhibit I saw in 2012 entitled Forgotten Chapters of Boston’s Literary History. The letter, written to Frederick W. Thomas and dated February 14, 1849, reads:
I wish you would come down on the Frogpondians. They are getting worse and worse, and pretend not to be aware that there are any literary people out of Boston. The worst and most disgusting part of the matter is, that the Bostonians are really, as a race, far inferior in point of anything beyond mere talent, to any other set upon the continent of N. A. They are decidedly the most servile imitators of the English it is possible to conceive. I always get into a passion when I think about. It would be the easiest thing in the world to use them up en masse.[2]
Here is the evidence of Poe’s usage of the term, but is this an isolated incident? Further investigation uncovered that it was not. On November 22, 1845, in an “Editorial Miscellany” in The Broadway Journal, Poe uses the term a number of times:
We knew very well that, among a certain clique of the Frogpondians, there existed a predetermination to abuse us under any circumstances. . . . We read before them . . . a very “juvenile” poem – and thus the Frogpondians were had . . . The Frogpondians may as well spare us their abuse. If we cared a fig for their wrath we should not first have insulted them to their teeth, and then subjected to their tender mercies a volume of our Poems: – that, we think, is sufficiently clear. The fact is, we despise them and defy them (the transcendental vagabonds!) and they may all go to the devil together.[3]
Why would Poe write such a scathing letter? What had occurred in his biography at this point to erupt in him a hatred for Boston? On the evening of October 16, 1845 Poe was invited to give a reading at the Boston Lyceum, an invitation arranged by James Russell Lowell.[4] It was advertised that Poe would read a new poem written specifically for Boston and for that occasion. Poe apparently did not compose a new poem for the occasion and, after the Honorable Caleb Cushing spoke for what was believed to be three hours, the poet delivered a few remarks on didacticism followed by a reading of his obscure poem “Al Aaraaf,” after which he delivered a reading of “The Raven,” his most famous poem. The poem he read was “long and utterly unsuited for oral deliver,”[5] and it was noted that the audience began to leave in the middle of his reading.[6] To make an embarrassing matter worse, Cornelia Wells Walter, the editor of the Boston Evening Transcript, published an editorial the next day calling the reading a failure and Poe’s recitation of a poem he wrote many years previous a hoax.[7] She and Poe traded editorial blows; thus, out of the Boston Lyceum incident came his critique of the the Boston literary scene.
But the Lyceum incident was not the only inciting event that sparked a critique of Boston writers. Poe began to have feuds with many New England writers, including James Russell Lowell, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Greenleaf Whittier, and specifically Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Poe’s favorite accusation to lob at other writers was “plagiarist,” and he set out on campaigns to make writers’ usage of other writer’s work known to the public. He voiced his critique of Longfellow in public, which included editorials and letters to various literary magazines. Poe anonymously wrote the following in Alexander’s Weekly Messenger, responding to Willis Clark:
Mr. Poe does not say that Professor Longfellow’s poem is “imitated” from Tennyson. He calls it a bare-faced and barbarous plagiarism “belonging to that worst species of literary robbery, in which, while the words of the wronged author are avoided, his most intangible, and therefore his least defensible and least reclaimable property, is purloined.” In support of this accusation he has printed the poems in question side by side — a proceeding, which, we must acknowledge, has an air of perfect fairness about it. . . . Matters standing thus, the question is altogether one of opinion. Mr. Poe says the Professor stole the poem; so do we; and so does every body but Mr. Clarke.[8]
As Sidney P. Moss points out in his book Poe’s Literary Battles: The Critic in the Context of His Literary Milieu, literary challenges from one writer to another were common in a time when the literary landscape in mid-19th century America was breaking away from its British heritage and forming its own identity. According to Moss, Poe was essentially doing the literary world a favor, wanting to “smash the power of the literary cliques intrenched in Boston and New York City”[9] that essentially could make or break an author’s career. Moss also points out that Poe was indeed a literary reformer. Anyone who has read his work can agree that Poe was doing something radically different in terms of style and content than many of his contemporaries were doing. It could be seen that Poe’s accusation of plagiarism was his way of spurring on his fellow writers towards more original, creative thought. In this light, his critique of Boston’s Frogpondians alters, from a personal disdain towards the literary community of Boston to a sardonic encouragement towards higher literary pursuits.
Despite his fierce critique of Boston, Bostonians still hold their locally born author close, and out of that appreciation The Edgar Allan Poe Foundation of Boston was founded. They seek to elevate Poe’s renown in the city, and their main goal over the past few years was to raise funds to install a statue of Poe in Poe Square, located at corner of Boylston Street and Charles Street. The statue has gone through final approval and will be unveiled on October 5, 2014, according to the their website.[10] Poe will thereafter have a permanent remembrance in the city of his birth. At the dedication of Poe Square on April 27, 2009, Mayor Tom Menino stated that, despite Poe’s “anti-Boston zingers . . . it’s time to stake our claim to a major part of Poe's legacy. . . . Time for the raven to join ducklings and swans on our list of favorite birds.’”[11] Whether it be viewed positively or negatively, and whether he himself desired it at all, Edgar Allan Poe will have a lasting legacy here in Boston – for better or for worse.
Works Cited
Moss, Sidney P. Poe’s Literary Battles: The Critic in the Context of His Literary Milieu. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1963.
Nakamura, Junichi. Edgar Allan Poe’s Relations with New England. Japan: The Hokuseido Press, 1957.
Phillips, Mary E. Edgar Allan Poe: The Man, Vol. 1. Chicago, Philadelphia, Toronto: The John C. Winston Co., 1926.
Poe, Edgar Allan. “Editorial Miscellany.” The Broadway Journal, November 22, 1845. Forgotten Chapters of Boston’s Literary History, Boston Public Library, March 28 - July 30, 2012.
—. “Edgar Allan Poe to Frederick W. Thomas.” Autographed Letter. February 14, 1849. Boston Public Library, Rare Books & Manuscripts.
—. “Tennyson vs Longfellow.” Alexander’s Weekly Messenger, vol. 4, no. 7. (February 12, 1840): , 2.
Schworm, Peter. “Nameless, Here? Not Evermore.” The Boston Globe. April 28, 2009.
[1] Mary E. Phillips, Edgar Allan Poe: The Man, Vol. 1, (Chicago, Philadelphia, Toronto: The John C. Winston Co., 1926), 74.
[2] Edgar Allan Poe, “Edgar Allan Poe to Frederick W. Thomas,” Autographed Letter, February 14, 1849.
[3] Edgar Allan Poe, “Editorial Miscellany,” The Broadway Journal, November 22, 1845.
[4] Junichi Nakamura, Edgar Allan Poe’s Relations with New England, (Japan: The Hokuseido Press, 1957), 27.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Sidney P. Moss, Poe’s Literary Battles: The Critic in the Context of His Literary Milieu, (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1963), 194.
[7] Ibid., 193.
[8] Edgar Allan Poe, “Tennyson vs Longfellow,” Alexander’s Weekly Messenger, vol. 4, no. 7, February 12, 1840, 2.
[9] Sidney P. Moss, Poe’s Literary Battles: The Critic in the Context of His Literary Milieu, (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1963), 3.
[11]Peter Schworm, “Nameless, Here? Not Evermore,” The Boston Globe, April 28, 2009.
