"EDGAR ALLAN POE."

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18192, 11 September 1922, Page 9

"EDGAR ALLAN POE."

WORKERS' EDUCATIONAL LECTURE.

A public lecture on the We. and work, of the great American writer, Edgar Allan Pee, was given yesterday afternoon by Mr. Hugh McChesney, under the auspice* of the Workers' Educational Association. Mr. L. F. Mander presided. At school Poe was a brilliant scholar and athlete, stated the leoturer, but the i act ( that he was the child ol actor-papenta caused him considerable trouble in his,relations with his school-fellows. Misfortune, combined with his lack of compatibility with men, tinged his work with cynicism, jle was a biting critic and mercilessly attacked the writers of his day—many of whom would better have been left in obscurity. Poetry was riot, he held, the teaching of moral lessons—such as. was the vogua then—but the "rhythmical creation of beauty," and he considered that every poem should have a unity of form, and should not. have more than about one hundred lines. 'The speaker referred to some of Poe's prose works, particularly to his "mystery" stories. There was no doubt, he thought, that Sir Cbnan Doyle had got most of his ideas for detective stories from Edgar Allan Poe. Selections from his prose and poems revealed the morbid and imaginative style of the man, something of which could, perhaps, be traced to his indulgence in the use of narcotics.