Nathaniel Parker Willis, introductory note in the New York Evening Mirror

Willis (1806–67) was one of the most productive and successful magazinists of the day. He was a competent editor, poet, dramatist, and fiction writer, though his gossipy travel sketches brought him most attention. Willis was a good friend to Poe at this time, and for a few months from October 1844 he employed him as a ‘mechanical paragraphist’ on the Evening Mirror.