Horace Binney Wallace

Horace Binney Wallace (February 26, 1817 – December 16, 1852) was an attorney, a critic of art and literature, and an accomplished author. He was a member of the Bar of Philadelphia.

Horace Binney Wallace was born on South Fourth Street, Philadelphia to a wealthy family. His father was John Bradford Wallace, a lawyer; his mother, Susan, was sister to the prominent lawyer Horace Binney. Horace Wallace was the youngest of the family and had six older siblings: Susan, Mary, Elizabeth, William (died at 3 years old), Marshall (died at 1 year old), and John William.

Wallace began college at The University of Pennsylvania in 1830 at the age of thirteen; he then transferred in his junior year to Princeton University, where he graduated in 1835. He was recalled as being a child of a "somewhat individual and reclusive" disposition, as well as "fond and amiable". One of his Princeton professors, Willard Thorp, characterized him as being "an enigma wrapped in a cloak of mystery."

Before the age of twenty he had proposed a "New Theory of Comets" which his uncle Horace Wallace says he later discarded as "too playful for the grave science." In 1838 he published, anonymously, a novel in two volumes titled Stanley, Or, The Recollections of a Man of the World. Along with the judge John Innes Clark Hare, he published "a careful editorship" of Smith's Leading Cases and Tudor's Leading Cases in Equity. Many of his legal writings were also published in George Pope Morris and Nathaniel Parker Willis's Home Journal.

Wallace published under a number of pseudonyms during his career, including "William S. Somner", "William Landor", and "John H. Meredith". He contributed to many magazines including Graham's Magazine, Godey's Lady's Book, and The Knickerbocker. He is well known for having published in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine at the same time as Edgar Allan Poe, with whom he corresponded. Poe wrote that "He is an elaborately careful, stiff, and pedantic writer, with much affectation and great talent. Should he devote himself ultimately to letters, he cannot fail of high success."

...
Wikipedia