A regular and prolific contributor to the Massachusetts Magazine , Judith Sargent Murray probably wrote an anonymously published and joyfully feminist poem that ran in the September 1794 issue: “Lines Written by a Lady, who was questioned respecting her inclination to marry.”

Haunted by the possibility that Edgar Allan Poe wrote a long-forgotten verse satire published in the September 1835 issue of the New England Magazine , the author of this essay launches an investigation to rid himself of his obsession.

In 1839, Edgar Allan Poe insisted that, though Henry Wadsworth Longfellow had “high qualities,” his reputation would not survive into the future. Poe's seemingly prescient prediction reveals a good deal about Longfellow's practice as a poet as well as Poe's contribution to the development of both modernism and popular culture.