Poe and the Printed Word

For the fullest discussion of Poe and contemporary print culture, see Kevin J. Hayes, Poe and the Printed Word (New York Cambridge University Press, 2000). 

KEVIN j. HAYES, Professor of English at the University of Central Oklahoma, has, among other books, written A Colonial Woman s Bookshelf 1996)-, Folklore and Book Culture 1997) The Library of William Byrd of Westover (1997)) for which he won the first annual Virginia Library History Award Melville s Polk Roots (1999) and Poe and the Printed Word (Cambridge University Press, 2000). In addition, he has edited previous collections of critical essays including Henry James The Contemporary Reviews (Cambridge University Press, 1996). 

For Poe, words were indissociable from the fact of mechanical mediation by the printing press the ideas in his texts were material objects, designed to bring about material transformations. The plans for his ideal literary magazine, The Stylus, emphasize that Literature requires a concrete network of readers and producers, as well as the links that join them. The Stylus - an iron instrument that draws lines - aimed at writing a literary nation into... 

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