Review of “A Tale of Jerusalem” (1832)

Text

Edgar Allan Poe (writer).

Read in 2022.

An embarrassing trade between Romans and Jews in the year 3941, that is 181 CE

The prose of this satire is not Poe’s own; it’s an excitingly radical departure, apparently because it’s a cut-and-paste job from Horace Smith’s historical novel Zillah (1828) for the purpose of parody. It would have been fun to see Poe ridiculing ostentatious historical fiction at greater length, but this example is somewhat lost on me because I haven’t read the original.

References here: “Four Beasts in One” (1836).

text fiction