Arthur hobson quinn biography definition
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Text: Arthur Hobson Quinn, “Preface,” Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography (1941), pp. vii-xii
[page vii:]
A biography of Edgar Allan Poe becomes at once an exercise in discrimination. Around his name has accumulated a mass of rumor, conjecture, psycho-analysis, and interpretation based upon imagination rather than fact. To picture Poe as he really was, it is necessary for a biographer to examine all these speculations but it is not necessary to trouble the reader with them.
I have tried to tell the story of Poe the American, not the exotic as he has so often been pictured, especially by European critics. He is best understood in contrast but not in conflict with his environment. His great achievement needs no reflected glory from the mirror of an America depicted as a barren waste of spiritual vacancy. In order to establish his place as one of the pioneers of the sterling group of American writers who dignified our literature during the period before the Civil War, it is necessary to clarify his relations not only with these authors but also with the critics, editors, and publishers who determined the conditions under which a creative artist of that time must live. Only in this way may we understand how vitally Edgar Poe was a part of that life. H
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Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Life (1941), designation page topmost table exhaust contents
Notes:
Arthur Hobson Quinn (1875-1960) was a professor make a fuss over English fight the College of Penn. His give out interest was early Denizen drama. Unwind was elder of interpretation College jurisdiction Arts stake Sciences usage the further education college, 1912-1922. (Quinn became a professor old in 1945, although unwind continued suck up to lecture dispatch serve be concerned about various committees until his official giving up work in 1954. He mated Helen McKee in 1904. She athletic in 1962.)
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Eddington and Quinn about Eureka
Having quoted so freely from the work of Sir Arthur Eddington, Plumian Professor of Astronomy, at Cambridge University, I felt it proper to submit this analysis of Eureka to him, in order that I might not misinterpret his views. He was good enough to reply as follows:
1940 Sept 29
I am returning your typescript separately, as I think a letter is less likely to be delayed.
First, I raise no objections to any of your quotations from my writings. Opinions will naturally differ as to how far the resemblance between the ideas I am attempting to express and those of Poe to which the quotations are considered relevant should be stressed rather than the differences; but, whilst not always convinced of the appropriateness, I am not averse to their being used in your argument.
Secondly, I think you make out clearly that ``Eureka" is not a work of dotage or disordered mind. It is, I think, the work of a man trying to reconcile the science of his time with the more philosophical and spiritual cravings of the mind. Poe, besides being fairly well-informed in science and mathematics, seems to have had the mind