But why would anyone say the

ROCK STAR

EQUIVALENTS

...during the ...

FIRST HALF

of the

NINETEENTH
CENTURY

... were the prose and poetry writers?

After all, there were actors, singers, and comedians who performed in the years from 1800 to 1850. Since entertainment had to be live entertainment, there were stars of the stage.

A little known fact of the pre-electronic eras is that stage performers were considered rather disreputable characters of loose lifestyle and even looser morals. Sometimes hotels wouldn't even let them register.

But authors were considered elevated and refined. Novelists and poets were particularly honored and some of them did indeed attain the prestige of rock stars who today are lionized as heroes and honored with the highest awards and medals of the world's governments. So perhaps it's better to say that today's rock stars are the post-Millennium equivalents of the 19th Century literary luminaries

Literary Equivalents

Elvis

Mick and Keith

Phil and Don

Janice

Sir Tom

Jimi

Elton, Tony, and Gaga

Nancy

Ritchie

The Fab Four

Arlo

Perhaps the biggest literary divergence of the early 19th Century from our own was that poetry was big business. Everybody read poems, newspapers printed them, and ordinary people wrote them. You would include poems in letters to your friends and in guestbooks when you visited someone at their home.

In 1842 Rufus Griswold, a sometime clergyman turned rather grumpy editor, issued The Poets and Poetry of America. It became a best seller and among the poets Rufus honored were - and to skip this rather lengthy list click here - John Adams, Albert Pike, Albert G. Greene, Alexander H. Everett, Alfred B. Street, Andrews Norton, Arthur Cleveland Coxe, Augustine J. Duganne, Bayard Taylor, Benjamin B. Thatcher, Carlos Wilcox, Charles Brooks, Charles Sprague, Charles Fenno Hoffman, Charles G. Eastman., Charles G. Leland, Christopher P. Oranch, Clement C. Moore, Cornelius Matthews, David Humphries, E. Spencer Miller, Edmund D. Griefin, Edward Everett, Edward Sanford, Edward C. Pinkney, Epes Sargent, Ephraim Peabody, Erastus W. Ellsworth, Eufus Dawes, Fitz-greene Halleck, Fortunatus Cosby, Francis S. Key, Frederick S. Cozzens, Frederick W. Thomas, George Bancroft, George Hill, George Lunt, George D. Prentice, George H. Boker, George H. Colton, George P. Morris, George W. Bethune, George W. Cutter, George W. Dewey, George W. Doane, George W. Patten, Grenville Mellen, Henry Ware, Henry B. Hirst., Henry R. Jackson, Henry R. Schoolcraft, Henry T. Tuckerman, Henry W. Parker, Henry W. Longfellow, Isaac Clason, Isaac Mclellan, J. G. Brainard, J. H. Bright, J. M. Legare, James Aldrich, James Eastburn, James Hillhouse, James Nack, James Paulding, James Freeman Clarke, James G. Brooks, James G. Percival, James Otis Rockwell, James Russel L. Lowell, James T. Fields, James W. Miller, Jedediah Vincent Page Huntington, Joe L. Barlow, John Neal, John Pierpont, John Shaw, John Trumbull, John E. Thompson, John Esten Cooke, John G. Saxe, John G. Whittier, John H. Bryant, John Howard Payne, John M. Harney, Jonathan Lawrence, Jones Vert, Joseph Drake, Joseph Hopkinson, Levi Frisbie, Louis Noble, Matthew C. Field!, Micah P. Flint, Nathanie L. L. Frothingham, Nathanie L. P. Willis, Oliver Holmes, Otway Curry, Park Benjamin, Philip Freneau, Philip Pendleton Cooke, Ralph Hoyt, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Alsop, Richard Coe, Richard H. Dana, Richard Henry Stoddard, Richard Henry Wilde, Robert C. Sands, Robert H. Messenger, Robert T. Conrad, Robert Treat Paine, Samue L. Gilman, Samue L. Woodworth, Samue L. G. Goodrich, Seba Smith, St. George Tucker, St. John Honeywood, Sumner Lincoln Fairfield, Theodore S. Fay, Thomas Mackellar, Thomas Ward, Thomas Buchanan Read, Thomas Dunn English, Thomas W. Parsons, Timothy Wight, Walter Colton, Washington Allston, William Cliffton, William Croswell, William Leggett, William Munford, William Allen Butler, William B. Tappan, William B. Walter, William B. Peabody, William C. Doane, William Cullen Bryant, William D. Gallagher, William Gilmore Simms, William H. Burleigh, William H. Hosmer, William J Pabodie, William Pitt Palmer, William Ross Wallace, William W. Lord, Willis Gaylord Clark - and Edgar Allan Poe. (To return to the top of the list click here.)

A reader who dips into Rufus's book will immediately see that the number of poems included for any given poet does not always correlate with their current fame. In the first edition printed in 1842, there were over forty poems by Charles Fenno Hoffman (one of which was "The Origin of Mint Juleps"). Today Charles is all but forgotten while there are only three poems by Edgar Allan Poe.

In fact, Edgar was almost ignored entirely. By the early 1840's he was not well-known to most Americans and scarcely shows up in newspaper stories. Although he was a familiar face in literary circles, people knew him mainly as a magazine editor who also wrote short stories.

But Edgar had always always wanted to be a poet and at age eighteen he published his first book of poetry which was, we must point out, grudgingly funded by his step-father John Allan. It took some prodding by Edgar to get Rufus to slip in his poems "Coliseum", "The Haunted Palace", and "The Sleeper". Even with the seventh edition in 1846, Edgar was still represented by the same three poems.

But by then Edgar was a famous poet. A year earlier, in January, 1845, he had published what is perhaps the most famous poem in literature. That's the The Raven which has an opening that virtually everyone can recite. Although the poem was originally published with the pseudonym "Quarles", only a month after its first printing it was appearing with Edgar's full name.

"The Raven" was quite literally the hit of the year. Suddenly Edgar's name was in the papers and kids followed him along the street crying "Nevemore!" He went along with the joke and would stop, turn around, and flap his arms like wings. He was booked for lecture tours where the climax of each performance was his reciting the poem. When he was arrested for drunkenness in Philadelphia, the judge saw him and said, "Why that's Poe, the poet!" and let him go.

Possibly the poem's omission from the 1846 edition was simply because all the other poems had already been selected and set in type. Slipping in another poem would have required the laborious task of shifting all the following poems in the galley and renumbering the pagination.

But we also have to remember Rufus and Edgar did not like each other A-TALL. The reasons for the reciprocal animosity have never been completely figured out, but we do know that both men had developed, well, an "interest" in the attractive - and married - female poet, Frances Sargent Osgood. Fanny - as her friends called her - had two poems included in Rufus's book.

But Rufus had to bow to the inevitable. Finally - and we suspect grudgingly - he printed "The Raven" in the 1847 edition of Poets and Poetry of America, and he added "The Conquerer Worm" as well. That brought the tally of Edgar's poems up to - count 'em - FIVE - count 'em - poems.

Edgar died in Baltimore on October 7, 1849 in strange and as-yet unexplained circumstances. But early that year he had another hit with the publication of "Annabelle Lee" and the printing of "The Bells" at the end of the year brought Edgar even more posthumous fame. So for the 1850 edition, Rufus included 17 of Edgar's poems. In addition to "The Raven", "Annabell Lee", and "The Bells", as well as the earlier selections "Coliseum", "The Haunted Palace", "The Sleeper", and "The Conqueror Worm", Rufus added "The City in the Sea", "Ulalume", "To Zante", "To ---, "Dream-Land", "Lenore", "Israfel", "To F. S.", "For Annie", and "To One in Paradise",.

Edgar's modern fame as a poet and as the originator of the modern horror and detective stories has somewhat obscured his contemporary reputation as a rather savage critic who would trash fellow writers most severely. His criticism of poets was particularly harsh and could be so savage that he was dubbed "The Tomahawk Man". Edgar himself was parodied by the caricaturist Felix Darely in Holden's Dollar Magazine in 1849, and we can be sure that the drawing and the accompanying poem were terribly funny.

With tomahawk upraised for deadly blow,

Behold our literary Mohawk, POE!

Sworn tyrant he o'er all who sin in verse--

His own the standard, damns he all that's worse;

And surely not for this shall he be blamed--

For worse than his deserves that it be damned!

Who can so well detect the plagiary's flaw?

"Set thief to catch thief" is an ancient saw:

Who can so scourge a fool to shreds and slivers?

Promoted slaves oft make the best slave drivers!

Iambic Poe! of tyro bards the terror--

Ego is he - the world his pocket - mirror!

Poe's not the worst of bards, though bad he is;

Poor man! his worst of sins is synthesis!

Nor is he by great odds the worst of critics--

Only he runs stark mad on analytics:

Give him a dumpling, and he'll hatch a thesis¹--

Talk Choctaw to him - he'll choke with diaeresis;²

If he lives long enough, we'll find, per Hercle!

He'll print the cabula and square the circle!³

The mystic fates alone can tell how often he

Means to dress up old flame in new cacophony!

Area = S2 = πr2

S = r√π

Ironically the reference to Edgar:

Poe's not the worst of bards, though bad he is;

... indicates that before "The Raven" was printed, Edgar was considered a rather commonplace if not mediocre poet. And ...

Who can so well detect the plagiary's flaw?

... is a reference to a particular point of Edgar's criticism. A point, one scholar pointed out, was an example of Edgar's professional self-destructive behavior that compounded his personal self-destructiveness.

One of Edgar's favorite salvos was directed at authors he thought were plagiarizing others. However, much of the - quote - "plagiarizing" - unquote - was simply that Edgar was finding similar topics, themes, or wording in the stories or poems and it was not actual copying of another author's work. Although Edgar tossed the accusation toward a number of poets, his main battle was with America's most famous, popular, and wealthy poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Edgar also hinted that some authors had plagiarized his own work. He thought that Nathaniel Hawthorne's story "Howe's Masquerade" in The Twice Told Tales was suspiciously similar to his own story The Masque of the Red Death. The problem with Edgar's concerns was that the first volume of The Twice Told Tales was published in 1837 well before Edgar wrote The Masque of the Red Death in 1842.

So who, people asked, was plagiarizing whom? And yes, the line:

"Set thief to catch thief" is an ancient saw:

... is itself jab at Poe and is saying "It takes one to know one."

And this brings us to one of the most famous and popular poets of the early Victorian Era. That is the English poet Elizabeth Barrett who today is often referred to by her post-nuptial name, Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

For all of Poe's faults, one of the nicest things about him was how positive and encouraging he was to women poets. In fact, it's Edgar's admiration of Elizabeth that allowed his critics to throw the charge of plagiarism right back at him, particularly when they compared "The Raven" with Elizabeth's earlier poem "Lady Geraldine's Courtship".

But 'ere we go further (to be poetical), a brief review of poetry technicalities are in order.

Poetry as everyone knows is made up of lines of verse which are gathered together in groups called stanzas. Usually the stanzas have a set number of lines - sometimes as few as two - which have a particular pattern of meter and rhyme.

The individual lines are written in groups of a set number of syllables called metrical feet. Most metrical feet are two to three syllables long, but there are feet of four syllables.

In Latin or Greek poetry the syllables in a foot were designated long or short depending on whether the vowel in the syllable was long or short. But in English, which is a heavily accented language, the length is usually determined by the stress placed on the syllable. So in English a metrical foot is usually spoken of as stressed or unstressed, but long or short will also do.

Meter is typically written using what's called macron-breve notation. Here a long or stressed syllable is indicated by a macron, _¯ , and the unstressed or short syllable is written as a breve, ^_˘. So when representing the metrical foot called the trochee which is simply one stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable, you write _¯ ˘.

The oddest thing about modern poetical conventions is that when reading poetry you're supposed to ignore the meter and read it as if it was simply prose. And given that much modern poetry isn't even rhymed - and some poetry magazines refuse to except rhymed verse - you wonder what's the point.

But when "The Raven" was first published, careful readers noted that the meter was the same as "Lady Geraldine's Courtship". Both poems were, the poets tell us, written in trochaic octameter. So the basic line is:

... known to the hoi polloi as the "bump-a-bump-a-bump-a-bump-a-bump-a-bump-a-bump-a-bump-a" meter.

But in "The Raven", the last line of a stanza is trochaic tetrameter - only four feet.

So Elizabeth's opening line (spread over two lines for reasons of space):

With Edgar's opening lines with the same meter is:

Now some people may indeed read the poetry with this bouncy manner. On the other hand, others may emote more like:

That is, the last two syllables would both be long.

In fact, you can even read it like:

Where the last four syllables are long.

A metrical foot of two long continuous syllables is called a spondee. But instead of two spondees in a row, you can think of it as four long syllables in a single foot which is called a dispondee.

But going back to Edgar's complaint, if Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was a plagiarist as Edgar claimed because in his poem "Midnight Mass for the Dying Year" Henry used similar words and themes to Tennyson "The Death of the Old Year", then surely you can argue Edgar was plagiarizing Elizabeth when he wrote:

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain

Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;

... while Elizabeth's earlier poem had:

With a murmurous stir uncertain, in the air the purple curtain

Swelleth in and swelleth out around her motionless pale brows,

And then Edgar wrote:

Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore

    Of 'Never-nevermore'.

And Elizabeth? Well, in her poem she wrote:

Ever, evermore the while in a slow silence she kept smiling,

And approached him slowly, slowly, in a gliding measured pace;

Of course, that Edgar used the similar meter and occasional wording of another poet would not on itself constitute plagiarism. He was influenced by Elizabeth's poetry, perhaps, inspired by it, maybe, honoring it, likely. But we must admit that when Edgar accused others of plagiarism when he did exactly the same thing he does come off as a bit of a jerk.

Even today Elizabeth is one of the most popular poets in the world and her best known work today is the Sonnets from the Portuguese published in 1850. Some of the lines - as do quotes from Shakespeare - show up even today.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

Sonnets from the Portuguese was written to and for her husband Robert Browning. Today Robert, although also a famous poet in his own right, is mainly remembered as Elizabeth's husband.

Although we said Edgar was a fierce critic, it doesn't mean he never wrote nice things about other writers. Despite his wondering if Nathaniel Hawthorne's stories had suspicious similarities to his, all in all he had high praise for Nathaniel's works. Nathaniel today is best known not only for The Twice Told Tales but also The House of the Seven Gables about the troubles of a family in New England who have lived for a number of generations in a family home (which harbors the ghost of a former family member). As was expected from the norms of the day, good triumphs.

But it's The Scarlet Letter that most high school students read since the subject matter is something teachers figure might spark the interest of teenagers. But even English teachers have trouble plowing through the introduction titled "The Custom House", and so it's no surprise that the first chapters where Hester comes out of an old rundown jail to stand in the market place while the people from the town gawk and make snide comments quickly lessens the kids' interest.

It is sometimes said that The Scarlet Letter, was one of the first mass-produced novels printed by mechanized presses. However, it was printed in 1850 and the mechanized continuous presses were being used more than 30 years earlier.

The first printing presses were hand operated and cranked out - literally - one page at a time. So you set the type and ran multiple copies of one page. Then you switched to a new galley of type and printed the second page. You kept this up until the book was printed.

It was in 1814 that the first automated cylinder press was used. The pages were set on the surface of a cylinder and the printing was powered by steam. Multiple pages could be printed simultaneously and on both sides of a page. The rate of 1000 pages an hour was phenomenal. Although originally used for newspapers the cylinder press was quickly adapted to print books.

One of the most popular authors in early America was Washington Irving. Today, though, he's remembered mostly for two stories from his book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. One is "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" about the competition between a schoolmaster Ichabod Crane and a husky town rowdy named Brom Van Brunt for the affections of the lovely Katrina Van Tassel the daughter of a local (and rich) farmer. One night at a gathering at Katrina's home, Brom tells Ichabod and the others the tale of the headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow. On his way home after being rejected by Katrina, Ichabod finds himself pursued by a mysterious horseman. He never makes it back home and the next day the kids arrive at the school. But there was no schoolmaster. Ichabod was never seen again.

"Rip Van Winkle" was about an easy-going inhabitant living in New York's Hudson Valley. Rip prefers hunting with his dog Wolf although his wife keeps griping at him to get a real job. On one of his hunting trips he ends up coming across a group of small bearded men playing nine-pin bowling. They offer him a drink and he falls asleep for twenty years. He returns to the village finding his wife and friends have died and his children are grown. Finally recognized by the elderly villagers as the Rip Van Winkle who disappeared twenty years ago, he returns to his easy going lifestyle.

Washington also wrote historical books which are not always distinguished for their accuracy. It is, in fact, largely due to Washington that there are people who believe that during the Middle Ages everyone thought the world was flat until Columbus told them it was round. Of course, that the earth was round had been common knowledge for thousands of years. Irv also wrote a five-volume biography of George Washington who Irv said he met when he was a kid. All in all the biography is considered not too bad as it was one of the first attempts to show Washington as an actual human being and not as the popularly deified demigod.

Washington Irving became an author almost by accident. Although he was an American he moved to England right after the War of 1812. But rather than finding wealth in the post-war era, he encountered significant financial reverses. So he decided to try earning extra money by writing. His writings quickly became popular and one of his fans was the English author, Charles Dickens.

Charles Dickens was really the rock star of his day. He was a best selling author and made lengthy and lucrative lecture tours at home and abroad. But today's readers may be prompted to turn to his books - today available and in cheap and even free editions - and scratch their heads and think THIS was the pop-culture phenomenon of the 19th Century?

We have to admit it. If you read a Charles Dickens novel, the writing can come off a bit stiff, and - dare we say it - even corny. But worse, when kids in middle school get assigned one of Charles's books they face a daunting task. There's simply the sheer size of those suckers. A modern edition of Great Expectations runs over 500 pages, David Copperfield 700 pages, and Bleak House, 1000. And yet their parents and teachers gripe at them for not getting out and getting more exercise!

The truth is that Dickens's books are best consumed in in bite-sized and palatable chunks. That was, in fact, they way they were intended to be read. That's not just because they are lengthy but also because they were first published as serials. So they were issued piecemeal in magazines and newspapers with the chapters usually coming out monthly. So reading the whole book could easily stretch out over a leisurely year or longer. Charles also made sure that the chapters broke off just at a cliffhanger leaving the readers hankering for more and ensuring that they would buy the next issue.

Since the books were issued at such a leisurely pace, reading a Dickens novel was a nice way to relax after a hard day of clerking at your uncle's counting house. Also the characters and situations were familiar with the readers and added verisimilitude to the story. And even when the serials were combined and issued as novels, they were often bought by the same people who were already familiar with the story. So they could frequently dip back into the novel for a refreshing and welcome break.

But today Charles's books are literally force fed to the kids. Students are expected take in more in a week than the original audience read in three months - not to mention that the plot points in the novels are rarely those encountered by young modern suburbanites. Certain issues and words in the books are obscure today and require frequent elaboration and annotation while in the Victorian Era they were so common that they needed no explanation.

So there's plenty of reasons why the books of Charles Dickens shouldn't be popular. But they are, and they keep selling. Perhaps what keeps his book still available is that they are perfectly suited for adapting as screenplays. Because the plots are so long and involved, scriptwriters can pick and choose what will suit the modern viewer. Today it's probably fair to say that Charles has had more films and television shows based on his books than any other author (although fans of Sherlock Holmes may dispute this statement). Great Expectations has hit the screens (large and small) at least fifteen times, with some version coming out about every six years. Oliver Twist was not only made into movies, but it was a hit musical, both on stage and on film.

But the #1 story of Charles that everyone has seen (if not read) is A Christmas Carol, a story that has even infiltrated our language when anyone refers to a miserly stingy curmudgeon as a "Scrooge" and they vent a "Bah! Humbug!" even if in a humorous or satirical manner. A Christmas Carol has appeared in movie theaters and on television in nigh on 50 productions and has starred the likes of Sir Seymour Hicks, George C. Scott, Michael Caine, Jim Carrey, Mr. Magoo, Kermit the Frog, and Fred Flintstone. It has also been performed on stage since the 19th century, and once the casting of Tiny Tim in a production in a Quaint Town in the American Southwest brought cries of astonishment as the audience didn't think such acting was possible. For more of Charles and his works and life and times, you can just click here.

Charles not only invented some of the most famous characters in literature, but he himself has even appeared as a character - at least on television. On the episode of Bonanza, "A Passion for Justice", we see Charles while he's on a lecture tour. Then at the invitation of Ben "Pa" Cartwright, Charles (played by Jonathan Harris, "Dr. Zachary Smith" of Lost in Space) visits Virginia City. But while he's on stage and reading an excerpt of Oliver Twist one of the audience tips the hand that they knew the book already. It seems that the local printer had been pirating the book and distributing the work to the good citizens of Virginia City - which was perfectly legal in a day without copyright agreements. Miffed, Charles went to the printer to complain but found that the whole place had been trashed. Naturally he was suspected of being the culprit and was arrested. But Ben, as always, came through and the truth came out.

Sadly Charles never really visited Virginia City on his American tours. In fact, he never got even got out of the American Northeast and the plans he had made to go to Chicago and St. Louis had to be scrapped.

Of course, most authors have a bit of humor in their writings. Both "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle" can be classified as humorous writings. Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote "Mr. Higginbotham's Catastrophe" (which even Edgar Allan Poe liked). Charles Dickens wrote Pickwick Papers and there are elements of humor in many of his novels (such as the "fight" between Pip and Herbert, the "pale young gentleman"). And even Edgar wrote deliberately humorous stories like "Some Words with a Mummy" and "Never Bet the Devil Your Head". So it seems suitable to wind up with a few bon mots.

What did Edgar Allan Poe say to Virginia before dinner?

I'm RAVEN-ous.

How did Elizabeth Barrett praise the refreshments at her engagement party to Robert Browning?

She wrote Sonnets to the Port 'n' Cheese.

Why did Nathaniel Hawthorne keep his furniture from wobbling?

He lived in a House of Levered Tables.

Why did Washington Irving go into advertising for fried potato products?

He was great at writing Chip Brand Jingles.

... and of course there's:

What did Charles Dickens's wife think of their wedding night?

It wasn't up to her Great Expectations.

References and Further Reading

"The Poets and Poetry of America (1842)", Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore.

Poets and Poetry of America - With an Historical Introduction, Rufus Griswold (Editor), Carey and Hart (Publishers), Second Edition, 1842.

Poets and Poetry of America - With an Historical Introduction, Rufus Griswold (Editor), Carey and Hart (Publishers), 1846.

Poets and Poetry of America - With an Historical Introduction, Rufus Griswold (Editor), Carey and Hart (Publishers), 1847.

Poets and Poetry of America - With an Historical Introduction, Eleventh Edition, Rufus Griswold (Editor), Parry and McMillan (Publishers), 1851.

"The Raven", The New York Daily Tribune, 1846, February 4, 1845, p. 4.

"The Raven", The New York Daily Tribune, 1847, February 4, 1845, p. 4.

"The Raven", The Liberator, 1845, February 21, 1845, p. 4.

"A Mirror for Authors", Motley Manners, Esq., Holden's Dollar Magazine, Volume 3, p. 22-22, 1849.

The Man of the Crowd: Edgar Allan Poe and the City, Scott Peeples, Princeton University Press, 2023.

"Elizabeth Barrett Browning: 1806-1861", Poetry Foundation.

The Curator's Crypt, Chris Sempter (host), Edgar Allan Poe Museum, Richmond, Virginia.

"Edgar A. Poe", Ngram Viewer.

"E. A. Poe", Ngram Viewer.

"Edgar Allan Poe", Ngram Viewer.