[In the following excerpt, Hammond highlights the aspects of Poe's personal life that were reflected in the themes and tone of “The Raven,” and asserts that Poe's original inspiration for the poem originated with a book review of Barnaby Rudge that the poet wrote in 1841.]

‘The Raven’, the poem by which Poe is most renowned in the English-speaking world, owed its origins to a review of Barnaby Rudge which he composed for Graham's Magazine (February 1841). In the course of this review he commented significantly on the symbolical importance of the raven in Dickens's novel:

The raven, too, intensely amusing as it is, might have been made, more than we now see it, a portion of the conception of the fantastic Barnaby. Its croakings might have been prophetically heard in the course of the drama. Its character might have performed in regard to that of the idiot, much the same part as does, in music, the accompaniment in respect to the air. … Yet between them there might have been wrought an analogical resemblance, and although each might have existed apart they might have formed together a whole which would have been imperfect in the absence of either.

He seems to have brooded on the idea at intervals for a period of three or four years, discussing the concept with his friends as the poem painstakingly evolved through a series of drafts. It received its final form in the farmhouse in which Poe, Virginia and Mrs. Clemm were staying on the Bloomingdale Road, New York. The furnishings of this house, which was situated in those days in a semi-rural setting, actually included a ‘pallid bust of Pallas’ which has since become inseparably associated with Poe and as immortal as Holmes's Persian slipper or Alice's looking-glass. Writing in a fever of inspiration, confident that the poem would prove to be his popular masterpiece, he blended together the ingredients which, he sensed, would create a unique and unforgettable work of art: the antique, romantic furnishings of the room, the insistent refrain of the raven, the eternal theme of regret for the lost beloved and, fusing all into a cohesive whole, his skill in achieving an atmosphere of haunting melancholy.

That ‘The Raven’ has a direct relevance to the circumstances of his own life there can be no doubt. It combines two themes which were central to his emotional experience—the idea of the beautiful, dead, ‘lost Lenore’ and the lonely, bookish man who is confronted with his own inner self in the form of the raven. His wife Virginia was dying of tuberculosis and had been visibly ailing since the beginning of 1842. Brooding on this fact he seems to have realised that the ideal, romantic love he had visualised in youth had eluded him throughout his life and would continue to do so. Always, he sensed, he was doomed to be frustrated in his quest for a perfect emotional response; it was a dream which evaded his grasp each time he sought to achieve it. As the truth of this came home to him there must have been moods when despair almost overwhelmed his life. Writing to Poe apropos ‘The Raven’, his friend R. H. Horne commented shrewdly that in his view ‘the poet intends to represent a very painful condition of mind, as of an imagination that was liable to topple over into some delirium or an abyss of melancholy, from the continuity of one unvaried emotion’. Artistically and rhythmically ‘The Raven’ is an impressive piece of work—a haunting composition which has become one of the most quoted poems in the language, notable for its insistent metre and the unforgettable effect of its refrain—but it is much more than a technical accomplishment. Its logical presentation (it is almost alone in his poetry in telling a story) has tended to obscure the deep emotion with which it is written. It would be a remarkable poem by any standards, whoever had composed it: but as the work of Poe it is of intense psychological and emotional interest.

On its publication in January 1845 its success was instantaneous. It attracted more attention than anything he had written previously, even eclipsing ‘The Gold-Bug’. Writing to his friend F. W. Thomas some months later he claimed ‘The bird beat the bug all hollow’. It earned for him little financial reward but widespread critical and popular respect in the United States and England. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, to whom he dedicated his volume The Raven and Other Poems, wrote to him: ‘Your ‘Raven’ has produced a sensation, a ‘fit horror’ here in England. Some of my friends are taken by the fear of it and some by the music. I hear of persons haunted by the ‘Nevermore’, and one acquaintance of mine who has the misfortune of possessing a ‘bust of Pallas’ never can bear to look at it in the twilight’.