Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v2.djvu/75

Rh 1839) among other things, though he also composed at this time some of the best of his tales. In May, 1839, he became associate editor of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, but a year later he quarrelled with Burton and lost his place. From April, 1841, to May, 1842, he edited Graham's Magazine. And in 1843 he had for a while some tacit connection with a Philadelphia weekly, The Saturday Museum. In Burton's and in Graham's he published a number of the ablest of his book-reviews and some of the most striking of his tales. At the end of 1839 he brought out at Philadelphia a collection of his tales, in two volumes; and in 1843 a further edition of his tales was projected, of which, however, only one fascicle, containing but two of his stories, was published. In the same year he won a prize of a hundred dollars for his story The Gold Bug. But at no time during these years was his income from his writings or from his editorial labours sufficient to enable him to live in comfort. During his later years in Philadelphia, moreover, his weakness for drink had grown on him, and he had as a result lost many of his friends; his wife, too, frail from childhood, had become an invalid in 1841 or in 1842; and so, early in 1844, the poet concluded to seek a new field.

In April, 1844, he moved with his family to New York; and there, either in the city or at Fordham, a few miles out, he lived during the remaining five years allotted to him. The year 1844 was uneventful, but the year 1845 proved to be the pivotal year of his history. At the end of January appeared in the New York Evening Mirror, on which he had held a minor editorial position for several months, The Raven; and he became at once the most talked of man of letters in America. In the summer he published a new volume of his tales, and in the fall, a collected edition of his poems, The Raven and Other Poems. Early in the year he became assistant editor of The Broadway Journal; in July he became sole editor, and in October editor and proprietor of this paper; and thus was enabled to realize an ambition that he had cherished for more than a decade, to edit a paper of his own. But owing to financial embarrassments arising from various causes, he was compelled to give up this paper at the end of the year. During the first half of 1846 he was ill, so he himself claimed, for several months. In the middle of the year (May to October) he