by

Robert Armin

Occasionally, when a magazine editor contributes more than one major article to a single issue, he or she will assign authorship credit for one of the articles to a pseudonym. Edgar Poe is known to have used pen names on a number of occasions, but none more frequently than that of "Littleton Barry."

Beginning on September 6, 1845, with the brief sketch, "Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling," the credit, Littleton Barry, appeared five times in the Broadway Journal, the weekly literary magazine Poe was editing at the time.

For nearly a century and a half, Poe scholars have puzzled over the origin of this imposing nom de plume. In 1913, Killis Campbell suggested that Poe was influenced by the 1844 serialization of Thackeray's "Barry Lyndon" in Fraser's Magazine, an opinion that Burton R. Pollin continues to endorse in his 1986 annotated edition of Poe's Broadway Journal articles. The late Thomas O. Mabbott espoused yet another theory. In his definitive collection of Poe's Tales and Sketches, Mabbott wrote:

The signature is probably a combination of two pseudonyms. "Barry Cornwall" was that of the songwriter Bryan Waller Proctor whom Poe mentioned a number of times. John P. Kennedy signed "Mary Littleton" to his novel Horse-Shoe Robinson.

As is often the case when scholars try to piece together an explanation from fragmentary materials, the simplest and most likely solution is easily overlooked.

Several years ago, while doing preliminary research on a book about Edgar A. Poe and the New York literati, I discovered a most enlightening piece of information which may reveal Poe's inspiration for the pseudonym, Littleton Barry.

In the January 18, 1845 issue of the Broadway Journal, the magazine's theatre critic reviewed the January 6th New York opening of Boucicault's London hit, "Old Heads and Young Hearts," at the Park Theatre. Although the review was probably not written by Poe, it is more than likely that Poe saw the production. (He was an avid theatregoer in 1845, as his theatre columns in the Journal indicate.)

According to the review, "The first act opens with Littleton Coke, Esq., one of the legitimate rake-scrapes of the English stage, at his breakfast-table, in a Chintz morning gown." A little further down, we learn that "Mr. Barry, who always looks and speaks like a gentleman with some grave affair on his hands, represented the brother..."

Finding both the names Littleton and Barry in the same review seemed more than just an unusual coincidence. Joseph Ireland's Records of the New York Stage provided the missing key to the puzzle. Mr. Ireland's reproduction of the playbill lists, in part, the following cast:

Earl Pompion . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mr. DE WALDEN
Lord Charles Roebuck  . . . . . ." DYOTT
Col. Rocket . . . . . . . . . . . . . . " FISHER
Tom Coke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . " BARRY
Littleton Coke . . . . . . . . . . . . ." CRISP

It doesn't require too great a stretch of the imagination to picture Poe scanning the original playbill and pulling out the first name, Littleton, from the left column and the last name, Barry, from the right. But "Old Heads and Young Hearts" opened on January 6th, and the first appearance of Littleton Barry's credit did not occur until September 6th, a full eight months later. Would Poe have been perusing the playbill so long after the opening? It is not only quite possible, it is almost a certainty.

In the August 30th issue of the Broadway Journal, Poe wrote an overview of the then current theatrical season which included these words: "In looking over the play-bills of the Park for the coming season . . ." Is it not likely, then, that Poe was also using the playbills from the recently concluded season as background material for his theatre column?

One week later, the story on the front page of the Broadway Journal was credited to the newly-baptized Littleton Barry.