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At least
some of Poe's works have been in print, in one form or
another,
since the publication of his first collection of poetry, the now famous
and very rare Tamerlane and Other Poems (Boston, 1827). Only
about
twelve copies of this little pamphlet are known to exist, of which only
a few are complete and in good condition. Poe's subsequent collections
in book form of his tales and poems did not sell well and were printed
only in fairly small runs. The vast majority of Poe's writings
originally
appeared in magazines and newspapers, which in Poe's day carried poems,
stories and literary reviews along with news and other information.
Many
of Poe's editorial items were printed without Poe's name, making
attribution
difficult. A few poems existed only in the form of manuscripts which
were
not among Poe's papers at the time of his death.
Following Poe's death, the legal rights to his collected works were
secured, somewhat surreptitiously through R. W. Griswold, by publisher
J. S. Redfield. Redfield published the first two volumes, containing
poems
and tales, near the end of 1849. A third volume followed in 1850 and a
fourth in 1856. (The final four volume edition is generally listed with
a copyright of 1856.) This four volume set was quite popular and is
thought
to have sold several thousand copies a year. Redfield also published a
single volume containing just the poems in 1853, with "an original
memoir"
(presumed to have been written by Charles F. Briggs). The rights to
these
collections passed through a variety of hands, but continued to be
published
until about 1886, when the rights were purchased by A. C. Armstrong,
which
issued Poe's writings in several forms, most notably a six volume set
with
additional material and a new memoir by Richard Henry Stoddard.
Armstrong
appears to have sold the rights to George Putnam's Sons about 1902. By
then, other competing collections had already begun to appear, most
notably
that assembled and edited by Clarence E. Stedman and George E.
Woodberry,
published by Stone and Kimball in 1894-1895. Putnam secured the rights
to this edition as well and reissued it in full in 1903 to challenge
the
new 17-volume edition by James A. Harrison, issued in 1902 by T. Y.
Crowell.
Putnam also issued less substantial editions, though also in ten
volumes,
beginning in 1902. Among dealers and collectors, the most troublesome
edition is probably the undated 10 volume set issued by Harper Brothers.
Shortly after the initial copyrights expired in about 1876, a
trickle
of competing editions appeared, slowly swelling until it eventually
became
a full scale publishing free-for-all. The first serious alternative to
the Griswold edition was that of John Henry Ingram, published initially
in Edinburgh in 1874 and 1875. Foreign publishers had the advantage of
ignoring American copyrights, just as American publishers generally
ignored
foreign copyrights.
A complete listing of all editions of Poe's works would contain
several
hundred items. (Most of the 10-volumes sets are fairly common, and
primarily
repeat the same contents. They are of little interest to the collector
or scholar.) Compiling such a list, therefore, is impractical and will
not be attempted here. The following items are listed as significant,
representative
or interesting examples. |
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