Edward Coote Pinkney - Critical Assessment

Critical Assessment

Poet John Greenleaf Whittier was an admirer of Pinkney's work as was Edgar Allan Poe, who used one of his poems, "A Health", to publicly woo Sarah Helen Whitman at a lecture in December 1848. Poe mentions "A Health" in his essay "The Poetic Principle" to exemplify his own aesthetic theory and the association between whiteness, purity, and love. He wrote that Pinkney would have been better appreciated if he had been born in New England:

It was the misfortune of Mr. Pinckney to have been born too far south. Had he been born a New Englander, it is probable that he would have been ranked as the first of American lyrists, by that magnanimous cabal which has so long controlled the destinies of American Letters".

"A Health" was also praised in The Athenaum as "one of the prettiest things in American poetry" while another contemporary magazine put Pinkney among the top five poets of the United States at the time. The North American Review in January 1842, though questioning of the moral tone of "Rudolph" concluded, "The author evidently has much of the genuine spirit of poetry; his thoughts are occasionally bold and striking; some passages are wrought with much felicity of expression and clothed with a rich and glowing imagery... and a few minor imperfections, a highly poetical vein runs through the whole performance".