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Convincing Graham that they could together create a prestigious, high-quality monthly featuring American writers exclusively, Poe began in June 1841 to solicit contributions from notable authors—Irving, Kennedy, the poet Fitz-Greene Halleck, and even the much abused Longfellow. But privately he admitted to Thomas his growing irritation with Graham, and for the next two years pursued a clerkship in the administration of President John Tyler, successor to Harrison (who died soon after his inauguration). Poe was disillusioned by the absence of an international copyright law to protect the work of American authors and to prevent U.S. publishers from selling “pirated” English works. He was also appalled by the “namby-pamby” character of Graham’s, which added fashion plates and—at the end of 1841—two female editors to a staff that already included Charles Peterson. Poe nevertheless claimed responsibility for the journal’s commercial success and continued to write reviews, read proofs, and contribute tales (such as “Never Bet the Devil Your Head”) as well as a new series on handwriting called “Autography.” He also wrote an “Exordium to Critical Notices” questioning the campaign for “national literature” while warning of America’s “degrading imitation” of British culture. But in January 1842, a devastating event destroyed Poe’s tranquil home life: His young wife (then only nineteen) suffered a massive pulmonary hemorrhage while singing at the piano. “Dangerously ill” for weeks, she seemed to recover, yet relapses confirmed that Virginia, like Poe’s mother, had been stricken with consumption.

Vacillating between denial and anger, Poe sought forgetfulness in drink; sometimes absent from work, he quarreled with Graham about money. He still pursued the dream of a magazine of his own, urging Thomas to propose to President Tyler a journal edited by Poe that might “play an important part in the politics of the day.” When not overwrought, he carried out assignments for Graham’s, interviewing Charles Dickens in Philadelphia in March and producing for the May issue the famous review of Hawthorne that enunciated Poe’s theory of the tale based on unity of effect. He also published two stories betraying domestic anxieties: “The Oval Portrait,” which depicts an artist too busy to notice that his wife is dying, and “The Masque of the Red Death,” which represents fatal contagion as an unexpected intruder.

But another interloper, a fifth editorial associate added by Graham—Reverend Rufus W. Griswold—apparently precipitated Poe’s departure from the magazine staff. Griswold had included Poe’s work in his Poets and Poetry of America, the first comprehensive anthology of its kind, and Poe and Griswold expressed mutual cordiality but privately despised each other. At Griswold’s hiring, Poe abruptly resigned, claiming that the magazine’s feminized content—“the contemptible pictures, fashion-plates, music and love tales”—had motivated his departure, but he plainly refused to work with Griswold and saw his arrival as a threat to his own editorial influence.

Without steady income, Poe resumed old quests and cultivated new connections. Thomas spoke of an impending appointment at the Philadelphia Custom House, but Poe nevertheless visited New York seeking an editorial position—though inebriation undermined his efforts there. To Georgia planter and poet Thomas Holley Chivers, he proposed a lucrative partnership, still hoping to launch the Penn Magazine. Poe’s focus on the journal intensified in November, when hopes for a government position faded. Hearing that James Russell Lowell was founding a Boston magazine, Poe offered to become a contributor, forwarding a new poem, “Lenore,” and an essay, “Notes Upon English Verse.” Lowell also published “The Tell-Tale Heart” in his short-lived Pioneer, and upon its demise Poe announced to Lowell his own plan to create “the best journal in America.” He was soon contracting with a Philadelphia publisher of “ample capital” named Thomas Clarke to produce a