“After reading some of Poe’s stories one feels a kind of shock to one’s modesty. We require some kind of spiritual ablution to cleanse our minds of his disgusting images.”
Leslie Stephen, Hours in a Library 1874
“A verbal poet merely; empty of thought, empty of sympathy, empty of love for any real thing…he was not human and manly.”
John Burroughs, The Dial 1893
Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Mark's Text Terminal 