Subserviency to British criticism

There is not a more disgusting spectacle under the sun than our subserviency to British criticism. It is disgusting, first, because it is truckling, servile, pusillanimous — secondly, because of its gross irrationality. We know the British to bear us little but ill will— we know that, in no case do they utter unbiased opinions of American books … we know all this, and yet, day after day, submit our necks to the degrading yoke of the crudest opinion that emanates from the fatherland.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-45), U.S. poet, critic, short-story writer. Marginalia, ‘American Nationality in Literature”.