The Gift (Book) That Keeps on Giving: Poe’s “The Purloined Letter,” Rereading, Reprinting, and Detective Fiction

Abstract

Just published by Carey & Hart, and for sale by all booksellers. The Gift for 1845, with illustrations . . . and originally bound in calf extra . . . . We had reason, last year, to bestow high commendation on one of this class of American publications, and are glad to be [. . .] repeating it on the present volume. The Gift is still . . . so well printed, charmingly illustrated, as handsomely bound and as ably written as ever. This last is, after all, the feature which most attracts our regard . . . But [. . .] the story of “The Purloined Letter,” by Edgar A. Poe, we must regard [. . .] of literary merit.1