Key to the Materials for French Prose Composition

Like the masculine tales of his contemporaries, Hawthorne's works abound in detailed information about an arduous task. They are primers imparting instruction on the materials, "laws," and composition of the romance. While Ruth Hall is also a how-to manual for aspiring women authors, in Fern's case the advice deals not with the process of composition but rather with the best strategies for placing one's manuscript and coping with editors and publishers. Poe shared Hawthorne's preoccupation with technique and agreed that the making of literature was a profession as distinct as medicine or law. Finding favor with the mass public, he stated in a review of Sedgwick, "has nothing to do with literature proper." And by "literature proper," Poe meant a self-conscious art pruned of everything that was not literature, an art obedient to its own regulations and explainable on its own terms. Like Hawthorne, he invited readers into his laboratory and allowed them to glimpse the creative process. "The Philosophy of Composition" describes how he selected the topic, determined the length, and achieved the effect of his poem "The Raven" — a palpably fraudulent account that says more about the pressure to professionalize than about the text's actual preparation ...»