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The first collective edition of Poe's works was that of Rufus W. Griswold, published in four volumes, the first three volumes in 1850 and the fourth in 1856. The latest collective edition is that of Professor James A. Harrison, comprising sixteen volumes and published in 1902. The Griswold edition contains 42 poems, 68 tales, and 74 essays and miscellaneous prose articles. The Harrison edition—otherwise known as the “Virginia Poe”—contains 55 poems, 70 tales, and no less than 285 essays and miscellaneous articles. There are listed, also, in the same edition, in an appendix to the sixteenth volume (pp. 355-379), some forty other items, which for various reasons are not reprinted in this edition. And there have been pointed out since the Harrison edition appeared a number of additional items, including eleven poems, two tales, and about fifty brief essays; making in all a total of 66 poems, 72 tales, and nearly four hundred essays of one sort or another that are now attributed to Poe.
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page 325 note 1 The main sources on which Griswold drew for his edition were the ten volumes of Poe's writings published during the poet's lifetime and under his immediate oversight. These are: Tamerlane and Other Poems, Boston, 1827; Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems, Baltimore, 1829; Poems, New York, 1831; The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, of Nantucket, New York, 1838; Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (in two volumes), Philadelphia, 1840; The Prose Romances of Edgar A. Poe, Philadelphia, 1843; The Raven and Other Poems, New York, 1845; Tales, New York, 1845; Eureka: A Prose Poem, New York, 1848.
Griswold also appears to have had access to most of the magazines and newspapers to which Poe contributed. These include the following: The Baltimore Saturday Visiter, The Yankee and Boston Literary Gazette, The Philadelphia Casket, Godey's Lady's Book, The Southern Literary Messenger, The Baltimore Republican and Argus, The Richmond Compiler, The New York Review, The American Museum, The American Monthly Magazine, Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, The Pittsburg Literary Examiner, The Philadelphia Saturday Chronicle and Mirror of Our Times, Alexander's Weekly Messenger, The Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post, Graham's Magazine, The Boston Miscellany, The Pioneer, The Philadelphia Saturday Museum, The Philadelphia Saturday Courier, The Dollar Newspaper, The New World, Snowden's Lady's Companion, The Columbia (Pa.) Spy, The New York Sun, The New York Evening Mirror, The New York Weekly Mirror, The Broadway Journal, Arthur's Ladies' Magazine, The Columbian Magazine, The American Whig Review, The Democratic Review, The Philadelphia Spirit of Our Times, The Home Journal, Post's Union Magazine, Sartain's Union Magazine, The Literary World, The Flag of Our Union, the Richmond Whig, and The Richmond Examiner. He also drew on certain of the annuals in which Poe had published, which include: The Souvenir, The Gift, The Baltimore Book, The Opal, The Mayflower, The Missionary Memorial, and Leaflets of Memory.
It is clear, too, that Griswold had access to sundry manuscripts (mainly fragments) and to revised clippings of some of Poe's briefer essays.
page 326 note 1 In this estimate the articles on Bayard Taylor and William Wallace, which Griswold printed as separate essays (iii, pp. 207, 240 f.), are left out of account, since they appeared originally in the “Marginalia” (see the “Virginia Poe,” xvi, pp. 145 f., 175 f.); each of the several installments of the “Marginalia” is counted as a separate article; “The Literati” is counted as but one item; “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym” is counted among the tales.
page 326 note 2 In this number are included seven “poems attributed to Poe,” but, because of doubt as to their authenticity, relegated to an appendix (vii, pp. 225 f).
page 326 note 3 This edition not only contains the fullest text of Poe's writings that we have, but it is also supplied with a variorum for both poems and tales and with much other editorial matter that is of inestimable value to every student of Poe.
page 327 note 1 See the Preface of his fourth volume.
page 327 note 2 He omitted among other things the exquisite lines, “To Helen” (beginning, “Helen, thy beauty is to me”), and five of the juvenilia contained in the 1827 volume of the poems.
page 327 note 3 Through the discovery of a letter in which Poe acknowledges the authorship of the story (see Ingram's Life and Letters of E. A. Poe, London, 1891, p. 145).
page 327 note 4 Of which mention had been made in the list of Poe's tales enumerated by Lowell, in his sketch of Poe in Graham's for February, 1845.
page 328 note 1 This he found in manuscript among the Griswold Papers. It is published in Woodberry's revised life of Poe, Boston, 1909, ii, pp. 397 f.
page 328 note 2 See his The Complete Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, Boston, 1911, pp. 139 f. and passim.
page 328 note 3 See his volume, The Southern Literary Messenger, 1834–1864, New York, 1905, pp. 37, 42, 45.
page 328 note 4 See the Nation for December 23, 1909, and for October 19, 1911.
page 329 note 1 Tentatively attributed to Poe on the theory that “A. M. Ide” was a nom-de-plume adopted by Poe with a view to hiding some of his “hasty work” (see J. H. Ingram, The Complete Poetical Works of E. A. Poe, New York, no date, pp. 178-9). But Professor Harrison publishes several letters of Ide's to Poe (see the “Virginia Poe,” xvii, pp. 153 f., 156 f., 162 f.). Ide also contributed to the Knickerbocker Magazine in 1845 and 1846 (xxv, pp. 227-8, xxvi, pp. 116-8).
page 330 note 1 He used this signature with his article on “Palestine” in the Messenger of February, 1836 (credited to him in the table of contents for the volume); and also in later years with several of his contributions to Burton's Magazine and the Broadway Journal.
page 331 note 1 The satire was originally published in 1847 at Philadelphia, by W. S. Young. A part of it is reprinted in the “Virginia Poe,” vii, pp. 246 f.
page 332 note 1 It did not appear till November. It is reprinted in the “Virginia Poe,” xiii, pp. 141 f.
page 333 note 1 See the “Virginia Poe,” vii, pp. 238 f.
page 333 note 2 See also Notes and Queries, 3d Series, vii, pp. 61 f., 1865.
page 333 note 3 Here also may be mentioned several poems published in 1821 in a Baltimore volume entitled Miscellaneous Selections and Original Pieces in Prose and Verse, edited by Elizabeth Chase. These are signed “Edgar,” and it has been suggested that they are among the poems which Poe claimed to have written in 1821-2 (see Catalogue 344 of the Merwin-Clayton Sales Company, p. 32, New York, 1910). They are described, however, in the volume in which they appear, as having been written by a youth of eighteen, whereas Poe in 1821 was only twelve. Moreover, one of the pieces (pp. 216 f.) is addressed to a sister, “Ellen,” whereas Poe had but one sister,—Rosalie. 4 See the “Virginia Poe,” i, p. 73, vii, p. 252.
page 334 note 1 I have also stumbled upon sundry other pieces of verse published in Poe's time above the initial “P.”, but evidently not of his composition. Among these are a dreary poem on “Ambition” in the Providence Literary Journal for February 22, 1834; a sonnet (without title) in the New England Magazine for December, 1834; “Lines” in the Philadelphia Casket for November, 1837; “The Fairy Queen” and “Impromptu” in Alexander's Weekly Messenger for December 13 and 20, 1837; “Autumn Morning” in the Philadelphia Saturday Courier for October 15, 1842; “Woman's Tactics” in the New Mirror for July 8, 1843; and “To (On Giving Her an Album)” in the Dollar Newspaper for May 17, 1848. See, too, my note below (p. 349) on the lines “To Mary” in the New England Magazine for January, 1832. Among prose pieces subscribed in the same way, but hardly Poe's, is a short article on “Provincialisms” in the Southern Literary Messenger for August, 1849, xv, pp. 482 f.
page 335 note 1 This is not to be confounded with Poe's sonnet, “An Enigma,” addressed to Mrs. Lewis (see the “Virginia Poe,” vii, p. 110).
page 336 note 1 An answer to this enigma was published in the Casket for June, 1827 (i, p. 239), in some clumsy verses signed “A. G. B.”
page 336 note 2 Of these the second, third, fifth, and sixth were first given to Poe by Mr. Whitty in his recent edition of the poems, pp. 139, 143, 147, 144-5. I have not seen The Symposia; I rely here upon Mr. Whitty.
page 336 note 3 See Whitty, l. c., p. 165, note.
page 337 note 1 One line of the poem, “And tho' my poor heart be broken,” is reproduced almost verbatim in the twenty-third line of “Bridal Ballad,” “And, though my heart be broken.”
page 338 note 1 Cf. the third and the twentieth lines:
“So I to thee, through mental power, would each remembrance trace”;
“So thou by thy pure rays of thought art power to mental sight.”
Mrs. Whitman was a spiritualist.
page 338 note 2 There was an E. A. Park, instructor at Andover, who lectured at Dartmouth in 1839 (see the Philadelphia United States Gazette, June 12, 1839). And there was a writer of verses signing himself “E. A. S.,” who contributed freely to the newspapers and magazines of Poe's time. In at least one instance, the work of “E. A. S.” appears to have been given (perhaps by a typographical error) to Poe: see the lines beginning, “O, where shall our waking be,” in the New York Tribune of August 27, 1845, and Poe's note thereon in the Broadway Journal of August 30, 1845.
page 339 note 1 Professor Woodberry informs us (Life, i, p. 134, note) that the late W. M. Griswold inclined to attribute to Poe, “on internal evidence solely,” four stories published in Godey's Lady's Book in 1833-4, as follows: “The Maniac's Story” (signed “Æ”), in Godey's for September, 1833; “The History of a Hat” (signed “H”) in Godey's for August, 1834; “The Duel” (unsigned) in Godey's for October, 1834; and “The Prima Donna” (signed “Marc Smeton”) in Godey's for December, 1834. But, as Professor Woodberry points out, there is no good ground for assigning these to Poe.
page 340 note 1 The so-called “Duane” Messenger, now in the possession of Mr. Whitty.
page 340 note 2 Southern Literary Messenger, i, pp. 254 f.
page 340 note 3 See Woodberry's Life, i, p. 26.
page 340 note 4 See the “Virginia Poe,” xvii, p. 10.
page 341 note 1 This letter of “Fra Diavolo's” deals with the “poverty of invention” displayed in “The Doom,” its commonplaceness of style, and “the unnatural false tone of feeling that pervades it.”
page 341 note 2 Poe was living in poverty in Baltimore at the time; see Kennedy's letter of April 13, 1835 (Woodberry, l. c., i, pp. 109 f.).
page 342 note 1 The story has to do with some experiences of a wine-bibber with a mysterious tadpole found in a water-cask; the tadpole is killed, but the ghost of it returns to plague its destroyer.
page 342 note 2 There are also certain items once assigned to Poe that have already been rejected as his. These are:
- (1)
(1) A notice of Glenn's Reply to the Critics in Burton's Magazine for September, 1839 (v, pp. 164 f.). This is given to Poe in the list of his writings printed in the “Virginia Poe,” xvi, p. 363, but, as was pointed out in the Nation of December 23, 1909 (p. 623), it was written by Burton.
- (2)
(2) A review of The Poems of Alfred Tennyson, in Graham's for September, 1842 (xxi, pp. 152 f.). This appears in the “Virginia Poe,” xi, pp. 127 f. It has been denied to Poe, on the basis of internal evidence, by Mr. J. H. Whitty (see the New York Times Saturday Review of Books, December 11, 1909). In one of his reviews of Griswold's anthology (“Virginia Poe,” xi, pp. 237 f.), Poe attributes the review to Griswold.
- (3)
(3) A number of translations from the French published in the New Mirror in 1843-4 above the signature “E. P.” and attributed to Poe by Mr. Ingram (Life, p. 201). These, as Professor Woodberry has shown (Life, ii, p. 103), came from the pen of a woman, —probably, as he suggests, Emily Percival. A poem—“ The Idiot Boy ”—bearing the same signature and published in Graham's Magazine for June, 1847 (xxx, pp. 330 f.), probably came from the same source.
page 343 note 1 We know that he contributed to the February issue, however; see the Nation for October 19, 1911, p. 362.
page 344 note 1 Passages from the Correspondence of Rufus W. Griswold, Cambridge, 1898.
page 345 note 1 The denying of this item to Poe apparently necessitates also the denying to him of the brief notice in the May issue of Graham's which I gave to him in the Nation of December 23, 1909 (p. 623).
page 345 note 2 See the “Virginia Poe,” viii, p. x. He modifies this statement somewhat on p. xvi of the same volume, including three editorials in the estimate there made. But an examination of the pages of the Messenger for the period specified by Poe reveals that there were precisely ninety-four reviews (exclusive of the review of “Mellen's Poems ”in the May issue, which is credited to another) published during that time, the Sigourney-Gould-Ellet review in the issue for January, 1836, being counted by Poe as three items, and the Drake-Halleck review in the issue for April being counted as two (see Poe's own statement, l. c., p. xiv).
page 345 note 3 Indeed, Professor Harrison appears to have had doubts about the correctness of his position, since he excludes from both his edition and his bibliography several of these reviews, among them the lengthy one on Chief Justice Marshall in the Messenger for February, 1836 (ii, pp. 181 f.).
page 346 note 1 One such item—the notice of Haxall's Dissertation on the Diseases of the Abdomen and Thorax, in the Messenger for October, 1836 (ii, p. 725)—is singled out by Professor Harrison in a footnote (“Virginia Poe,” ix, p. 164).
page 346 note 2 On the other hand, we can identify without much difficulty most of Poe's unsigned contributions to Burton's Magazine—with the aid of a letter of his to Burton, of June 1, 1840 (in which he specifies the number of pages written by him for each issue from July, 1839, to June, 1840) and of letters written by him to Cooke and Snodgrass (see Ingram, l. c., pp. 142-5; Woodberry, l. c., i, pp. 212 f., 221, 242 f.; the “Virginia Poe,” xvii, pp. 51 f.); and we can also identify most of his contributions to the Broadway Journal, through the poet's own signature appended to them in a copy of the Journal presented to Mrs. Whitman and now in the possession of F. R. Halsey of New York City (see the “Virginia Poe,” i, p. xiii; xii, pp. viii f.).
page 346 note 3 See the “Virginia Poe,” i, p. xv; xv, pp. ix, 263 f.; xvi, p. vii.
page 346 note 4 See Griswold, l. c., iii, pp. 35 f., 79 f., 87 f., 101 f., 116 f., and the “Virginia Poe,” xv, pp. 263 f.
page 346 note 5 Whether or not he had authority for this, it is impossible now to tell.
page 347 note 1 See Griswold, iii, pp. 87 f., and the “Virginia Poe,” xv, pp. 271 f.
page 347 note 2 A small manuscript roll of “Marginalia” was among the rarities disposed of at the sale of the Stedman library in January, 1911; and Mr. Whitty mentions (l. c., p. 233) a manuscript volume of “Marginalia” once in the possession of a Richmond printer, but now lost.
page 348 note 1 In June, 1844, Poe wrote Anthon that his tales were “in number sixty-six” (Woodberry, l. c., ii, p. 78); and in a notice of the 1845 edition of. the tales, published in the Broadway Journal of July 12, 1845, while he was editor, it is asserted that the tales in this edition were selected from “about seventy tales of similar length, written by Mr. Poe.”
“Mellonta Tauta,” “Hop Frog,” “X-ing a Paragrab,” and “Von Kempelen and His Discovery” all appear to have been written during the last two years of the poet's life.
page 348 note 2 Griswold, it may be noted, included “The Philosophy of Furniture” among the tales. In the same way, Poe may have counted his essay, “An Opinion on Dreams” (printed in Burton's for August, 1839, and first assigned to Poe by Mr. Whitty, l. c., p. lxiii), as a tale. Perhaps, too, he counted his introduction to the “Tales of the Folio Club” as a separate story (see the “Virginia Poe,” ii, pp. xxxvi f.).
page 348 note 3 “Spectacles” was sent to Horne in 1843 or 1844 (see the “Virginia Poe,” xvii, p. 168, and Ingram, l. c., p. 204); and before this Poe had sent to Dickens a volume of tales which he hoped to have published in England (see the Nation for November 24, 1910, p. 492).
page 349 note 1 These Mr. Woodberry suggests (l. c., ii, p. 414) were probably the same as Poe's lines “To Mary” in the Southern Literary Messenger for July, 1835 (i, p. 636), later addressed to Mrs. Osgood under the title “To F —.”
But the lines to the “Baltimore Mary” are said to have been “very severe” and to have dealt with “fickleness and inconsistency”—a description to which Poe's lines in the Messenger do not answer very well. Another poem “To Mary”—and subscribed, as it happens, with the initial “P.”—appeared in the New England Magazine for January, 1832 (ii, p. 72). But this, too, contains nothing of the satirical; besides, it comprises sixteen lines, while the poem said to have been published in Baltimore was only “six or eight” lines in length.
page 350 note 1 Mr. Whitty suggests (l. c., p. 286) that this was perhaps a revised version of the poem “The Great Man,” found by him in manuscript in the desk used by Poe when editor of the Southern Literary Messenger.
page 350 note 2 Poe's statement on various occasions that he had also written a poem entitled “Holy Eyes” and a novel entitled “An Artist at Home and Abroad” must, of course, be dismissed as apocryphal (see Woodberry, i, p. 170; ii, p. 30).
page 350 note 3 A partial file of the Saturday Visiter for the years 1841 to 1846, is preserved in the library of the Maryland Historical Society, at Baltimore. It contains nothing of Poe's that was not first published elsewhere.
page 351 note 1 A file of this weekly—for the years 1837 and 1838—is to be found in the library of the Pennsylvania Historical Society.
page 351 note 2 See his letter to Lowell of March 27, 1843 (Woodberry, l. c., ii, p. 21).
page 351 note 3 See the Nation of December 23, 1909, p. 623 f., for a list of some twenty-five brief articles published in these magazines which are probably Poe's, but which have not yet been fully authenticated. It is possible, I think, that some of the shorter poems published anonymously in the Southern Literary Messenger in 1834 and 1835 are Poe's; and we can be all but certain that there are other critical articles in the Messenger for 1845 and 1849.
page 351 note 4 It is perhaps not a matter of large importance that all these scraps should be published, but it is at least desirable that such as can be shown to be Poe's shall be definitely set down to his credit, in order that the biographer and the literary historian may avail themselves of such information as they afford. See, in this connection, an editorial in the Atlantic Monthly, lxxvii, p. 552 (April, 1896), in which it was declared that owing to the incompleteness of the editions of Poe published up to that time there remained “for the student of Poe's life and times a field of research practically unexplored.”
page 352 note 1 In another letter (of March 8, 1849,—see the “Virginia Poe,” xvii, p. 341) he mentions having offered his tale, “Von Kempelen and His Discovery,” to Duyckinck for publication in the Literary World. And it has recently been shown that Poe in 1844 contributed miscellaneous articles to an obscure Pennsylvania newspaper, The Columbia Spy (see the Philadelphia Public Ledger, January 14, 1912).
page 352 note 2 I have been unable, however, to identify anything in Blackwood's as his, and the antagonism to Christopher North which he displayed on several occasions in subsequent years leads me to believe that he was disappointed in his expectations from that quarter.