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Ward

C.A. Bristed (1820-1874) was a favored grandson of John Jacob Astor and was educated at Yale and Trinity College, Cambridge. He was a classicist and philologist by training but became a critic and joumalist (although his wealth madę work unnecessary). Bristed was welł known among the elite, monied class in New York and Newport, RJiode Island. After completing his prize-winning studies at Cambridge in 1845, he retumed to America where he was married in 1847 and published a textbook edition of Catullus in 1849. He also began his career as a writer for periodicals in the 1840’s.

Bristed and Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was active in New York ffom early 1845 through 1848, when Bristed was in the city. Poe gained consid-erable attention when “The Raven” was published in The Evening Mirror and then the American Review in January and February of 1845. He began to participate in New York literary circles and published and wrote for the weekly Broadway Journal His lec-ture, “Poets and Poetry of America” was attended by 300 people in late February, and two voIumes of his work were published by Wiley and Putnam that year. In 1846, Poe was less evident on the literary scene due to a minor scandal over his correspondence with Mrs. Frances S. Osgood, and he moved to Fordham. However, he remained in the public eye because of the six pieces, “The Literati of New York City,” serialized in Godey’s Ladys Book, in which Poe claimed to be capturing the flavor and gossip of New York literary circles. After Poe’s death, these essays were included in the much larger collection, The Literati, published in 1850, which Baudelaire eventually consulted. This volume included the misleading and inaccurate memoir about Poe by

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