“Where was the detective story until Poe breathed the breath of life into it?” - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

“Poe's genius has conquered a special recognition for itself, and I too have come to fully admit it, and appreciate it and him.” - Walt Whitman

“Poe is the prince of American literature.” - Victor Hugo

“Poe, the marvelous lord of rhythmic expression.” - Oscar Wilde

“Eureka constitutes a most interesting and important contribution to cosmology... it contains the first anticipation of a formally correct solution... to the riddle of darkness...” - Professor Edward Harrison, Darkness at Night (Harvard University Press, 1987)

“America has been found out; and Poe had not; that is the situation. How did he live there, this finest of fine artists, this born aristocrat of letters? Alas! he did not live there: he died there, and was duly explained away as a drunkard and a failure... He was the greatest journalistic critic of his time... His poetry is exquisitely refined... In his stories of mystery and imagination Poe created a world record for the English language: perhaps for all languages... unparalleled and unapproached... Poe constantly and inevitably produced magic where his greatest contemporaries produced only beauty... There is really nothing to be said about it; we others simply take off our hats and let Mr. Poe go first.” - George Bernard Shaw