Edgar Allan Poe — “Al Aaraaf”

Reading copy:

• “Al Aaraaf” — reading copy

Manuscripts and Authorized Printings (full text):

• Text-01 — “Al Aaraaf” — 1829, no original manuscript or fragments are known to exist (but this version is presumably recorded in Text-02)
• Text-02 — “Al Aaraaf” — 1829 — ATMP — (Mabbott text C)  (This is the first full text)
• Text-03 — “Al Aaraaf” — 1831 — POEMS — (Mabbott text E) (with substantial revisions)
• Text-04 — “Al Aaraaf” — 1845 — manuscript changes in ATMP in preparation for RAOP — (Mabbott text J)
• Text-05 — “Al Aaraaf” — October 1845 — manuscript changes for reading in Boston
• Text-06 — “Al Aaraaf” — 1845 — essentially a reprint of text 04, with only minor revisions, RAOP — (Mabbott text K)  (This is Mabbott’s copytext)

Manuscripts and Authorized Printings (extracts):

• “Al Aaraaf” — May 18, 1829 — of excerpts only — (Mabbott text A)
• “Al Aaraaf” — December 1829 — of excerpts only — (Mabbott text B)
• “Al Aaraaf” — December 29, 1829 — lines 130-131 only, manuscript letter with extract — (Mabbott text D)
• “[Al Aaraaf]” — 1837 — two lines excerpted as the motto, in “Silence,” The Baltimore Book for 1838 — (not noted by Mabbott, no variants except the use of italics for one word, and minor issues of punctuation)
• “Spirit’s Invocation” — February 25 and March 4, 1843 — Saturday Museum  (excerpts only, as part of a biographical article about Poe.) —   (Mabbott text F)
  • “Spirit’s Invocation” — February 25, 1843  (No surviving copies located)
  • “ Spirit’s Invocation” — March 4, 1843 (reprinted from February 25, 1843)
• “Al Aaraaf” — February 1845 — excerpt only, Graham’s (This excerpt appears in Lowell’s article on Poe) — (Mabbott text G)
• “ Al Aaraaf” — May 24, 1845 — excerpts only, Broadway Journal — (Mabbott text H)
• “ Al Aaraaf” — November- December 1846 — extracts in “The Rationale of Verse,” manuscript fragments — (Mabbott text L)
• “ Al Aaraaf” — October 1848 — extracts in “The Rationale of Verse,” Southern Literary Messenger — (Mabbott text M)
• “ Al Aaraaf” — 1849 — extracts in “A Reviewer Reviewed,” manuscript — (Mabbott text N)

Reprints (extracts):

• “Al Aaraaf” — 1830 — Baltimore Minerva and Emerald (excerpts, printed as part of a review of ATMP)
• “Al Aaraaf” — November 4, 1845 — Boston Daily Star, p. 4 (reprint noted by Ljundquist, p. 206-208, item 7.)
• “Al Aaraaf” — November 5, 1845 — Boston Daily Star, p. 4 (reprint noted by Ljundquist, p. 208, item 8.)
• “Al Aaraaf” — November 6, 1845 — Boston Daily Star, p. 4 (reprint noted by Ljundquist, p. 208, item 9.)
• “Al Aaraaf “ — 1850 — WORKS — Griswold merely reprints Text-06  (Mabbott text P)
• “Al Aaraaf” — 1875 — The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol 3: Poems  and Essays, ed. J. H. Ingram, Edinburgh, Adam and Charles Black (3:62-76)

Reprints (extracts):

• “Al Aaraaf” — 1850 — extracts in “The Rationale of Verse,” WORKS — Griswold reprints the SLM text of this essay  (Mabbott Text Q)
• “Spirit Invocation” — 1850 — Thomas Powell, The Living Writers of America, New York: Stringer and Townsend, 1850, pp. 116-117. These excerpts from “Al Aaraaf” were probably reprinted from the Saturday Museum, which carries the title and essentially the same excerpts used)

Scholarly and Noteworthy Reprints (full text):

• “Al Aaraaf” — 1894-1895 — The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 10: Poems, ed. G. E. Woodberry and E. C. Stedman, Chicago: Stone and Kimball (10:107-120, and pp. 217-223)
• “Al Aaraaf” — 1902 — The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 7: Poems, ed. J. A. Harrison, New York: T. Y. Crowell (10:23-39, and 10:157-163)
• “Al Aaraaf” — 1911 — The Complete Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. J. H. Whitty, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co. (pp. 99-115, and pp. 266-268)
• “Al Aaraaf” — 1917 — The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. Killis Campbell, Boston: Ginn and Company (pp. 34-48, and pp. 171-192)
• “Al Aaraaf” — 1965 — The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. Floyd Stovall, Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia (pp. 25-40, and pp. 188-202)
• “Al Aaraaf” — 1969 — The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 1: Poems, ed. T. O. Mabbott, Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (1:92-127, and 1:159-160)  (Mabbott prints the 1831 introductory portion as “Mysterious Star”)

Instream Comparative Texts:

• None

Plain Text Files for Juxta:

• None

Miscellaneous Texts and Related Items:

• “Al Aaraaf” — dated 2009, but available in late 2008 — Poèmes d‘Edgar Allan Poe, Paris: Publibook (translation by Jean Hautepierre)

• Cairns, William B., “Some Notes on Poe’s ‘Al Aaraaf ’,” Modern Philology, May 1915, 13:35-44
• Church, Henry W. and Hervey Allen, “Poe and Nature,” Saturday Review of Literature, April 6, 1935, 11:598
• De Prospo, R. C., “Poe’s Alpha Poem: The Title of ‘Al Aaraaf ’,” Poe Studies, 1989, 22:34-39
• Heartman, Charles F. and James R. Canny, A Bibliography of First Printings of the Writings of Edgar Allan Poe, Hattiesburg, MS: The Book Farm, 1943.
• Ljundquist, Kent P., Victorian Periodicals Review, Fall 1995
• Mabbott, Thomas Ollive, “Al Aaraaf,’ Part II, 1-8,” Explicator, November 1957, vol. 16, no. 4
• Mabbott, Thomas Ollive, ed., The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe (Vol 1 Poems), Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969.
• Pettigrew, Richard C. and Marie M., “A Reply to Floyd Stovall’s Interpretation of ‘Al Aaraaf ’,” American Literature, January 1937, 8:439-445
• Pollin, Burton R., “Poe’s ‘sonnet — To Zante’: Sources and Associations,” Comparative Literature Studies, September 1968, 5:303-315
• Stovall, Floyd, “An Interpretation of Poe’s ‘Al Aaraaf‘,” University of Texas Studies in English, 1929, 9:106-133