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The set of four volumes (1850-1856)
edited
by Rufus Wilmot Griswold
(1815-1857) and printed by J. S. Redfield (Justus Starr Redfield,
1810-1888)
is an important crossroads in the publication of Poe's writings. It was
the first attempt at collecting both poetry and prose, and the first
collection
of Poe's critical, editorial and miscellaneous writings. Relying on a
wealth
of manuscript notes and corrections, it is also the last collection to
be at least partially authorized by Poe. It became the standard edition
of Poe's works for 25 years, and served as the model for nearly another
quarter of a century. It is also the edition upon which Charles
Baudelaire
based his famous translations of Poe's works into French in Histoires
Extraordinaires (1856), Nouvelles Histoires Extraordinaires
(1857) and Histoires Grotesques Et Sérieuses (1865).
The Works of the Late Edgar Allan
Poe
(The
Griswold
Edition) (1850-1856)
- Volume I: Tales
(First
printed, with
volume II, by January 10, 1850, although advertised as early as
December 8, 1849)
It would be difficult, merely seeing
these
unprepossessing volumes
on a shelf, to appreciate their controversial history. News of
Poe's
death in Baltimore on October 7, 1849 reached his mother-in-law, Maria
Clemm, in New York two days later. Shortly thereafter, she and Mrs.
Shew
appear to have approached Rufus W. Griswold and requested that he edit
and publish a collection of Poe's writings. It is often repeated that
Poe
himself asked that Griswold be his editor, but there is no definitive
surviving
evidence for this statement nor any explanation for why Poe should have
thought that he would require an editor. In 1854, Mrs. Lewis wrote, "I
did tell Griswold that Mr. Poe expressed a desire that he should become
his editor, in case of his death. I did this in compliance with
Mr. Poe's own request. He had great confidence in Griswold's editorial
ability . . ." (Sarah Anna Lewis to George W. Eveleth, Nov. 6, 1854,
quoted
in Miller, pp. 199-200). At the time, Griswold himself wrote, "I
undertook
to edit his writings to oblige Mrs. Clemm . . ." (R. W. Griswold to S.
H. Whitman, December 17, 1849, Harrison, vol. II, p. 406).
To J. R. Lowell, Griswold wrote, "Poe was not my friend — I was not his
— and he had no right to devolve upon me this duty of editing his
works.
He did so, however, and under the circumstances I could not well refuse
compliance with the wishes of his friends here. From his constant habit
of repeating himself, and from his habits of appropriation,
particularly in the Marginalia, it is a difficult task; but I
shall
execute it as well as I can, in the short time that is allowed to me —
that is, in three weeks" (R. W. Griswold to J. R. Lowell,
October
18 or 25, 1849, quoted in Quinn, 1941, p. 658).
Whether the idea was Poe's, Mrs.
Clemm's, Mrs.
Lewis's or
Griswold's,
Mrs. Clemm had a contract written
up
on October 15, 1849 which granted Griswold full power of attorney.
(This
contract is itself the subject of some controversy as Poe's true legal
heir should have been his sister, Rosalie, rather than Mrs. Clemm.) A
notice
"To the Reader" from Mrs. Clemm was to appear in the first volume,
stating
that the publication was for her financial benefit, although she seems
never to have received more than a number of sets of the volumes to
sell.
On March 9, 1850, Mrs. Clemm wrote to James Russell Lowell, "I have
received
a letter from Mr. Redfield. (The publisher of my dear son[[']]s E. A.
Poe[[']]s
works) in which he states that I will not receive any thing from those
works until the expenses are paid. I suppose this is right, but in the
mean time I must be entirely destitute" (M. Clemm to J. R. Lowell,
March
9, 1850, quoted in Quinn, 1941, p. 461). Later in the same year, Mrs.
Clemm
wrote to another correspondent that selling the volumes she has on hand
is "the only emolument that I shall receive from them at present" (M.
Clemm
to unknown correspondent, December 2, 1850, quoted in Gimbel, 1959, p.
185). After the appearance of Griswold's slanderous "Memoir" several
months
later in 1850, Mrs. Clemm came to regret her actions. In an 1860 letter
to Neilson Poe, she refers to Griswold as "that base, base man"
(M. Clemm to N. Poe, August 26, 1860, quoted in Miller, p. 50). In
1875,
E. Dora Houghton wrote to John Ingram, "When the books were published
her
indignation and grief was heart-rending to witness, and after
ineffectual
efforts, to get justice — expressed herself as heartbroken and was said
never to have smiled again" (E. D. Houghton to J. Ingram, January 9,
1875,
quoted in Miller, 1977, p. 90). Mrs. Shew also recalled that Maria
Clemm
had sold a bracelet "for three hundred dollars . . . intended to pay
Griswold
to keep his infamous life or destroy it and make none but such as Mr.
Poe's
friends approved" (M. L. Shew to J. Ingram, January 23, 1875, quoted in
Miller, 1977, p. 97). Griswold, likewise, had no love for Mrs. Clemm,
writing
to S. H. Whitman, "I cannot refrain from begging you to be very careful
what you say or write to Mrs. Clemm, who is not your friend, nor
anybody's
friend, and who has no element of goodness or kindness in her nature,
but
whose heart and understanding are full of malice and wickedness" (R. W.
Griswold to S. H. Whitman, December 17, 1849, quoted in Harrison,
vol. XVII, p. 406). T. O. Mabbott notes, "The appointment has led
to much discussion; the most reasonable view is that Poe had wished
Griswold,
a very able man, to be his editor, and had even mentioned the
possibility
to him, but in a way that Griswold had not thought a firm commitment"
(Mabbott, Poems,
p. 571, n. 8).
Having secured the rights and material
for two
volumes, Griswold
immediately
set to work. He asked Nathaniel Parker Willis and James Russell Lowell
to revise previously published essays they had written about Poe so
that
these could be used as introductory material. A letter from Griswold to
J. R. Lowell notes that "There are now six persons employed in setting
up the copy, and I understand four others will be added next week" (R.
W. Griswold to J. R. Lowell, October 31, 1849, quoted in Quinn, 1941,
p.
659.) James Cephas Derby comments that "Dr. Griswold had offered the
works
to nearly all the leading publishers, who declined to undertake the
publication.
He finally persuaded Mr. Redfield to try the experiment of issuing two
volumes first, which were published and had a fair sale — then the
third,
and finally the fourth, volume were added to complete the works. The
sale
reached about fifteen hundred sets every year" (Derby, 1884, pp.
586-587). Curiously, Derby also claims, "The copyright was paid at
first
to Mr. Poe, and after his death to his mother-in-law, Mrs. Clemm, who
received
the copyright on several editions. She came to Mr. Redfield one day in
a great strait — saying she was going to Baltimore to enter a home for
aged females. She wanted to raise two hundred and fifty dollars, and if
he would let her have that amount, she would relinquish all claims to
copyright.
Mr. Redfield hesitated at first, but finally yielded to her
importunities
and paid her the money, thus becoming owner of the copyright as well as
stereotype plates of Poe's complete works" (Derby, 1884, p. 587). This
claim has two serious flaws. Firstly, the edition did not even appear
until
after Poe's death, so that he could hardly have received any copyright
payments. Secondly, the copyright notices on all volumes, including the
earliest printings, clearly give J. S. Redfield as the holder. Derby's
comment about Griswold having trouble finding a publisher for the set
echoes
statements made in an anonymous article many years earlier: "On the
death
of the late Edgar A. Poe, and when almost every other publisher in the
City had declined bringing out his works, he issued them, in three
ample
volumes. They were remarkably successful, five large editions having
since
been sold" ("Publishers and Publishing in New-York," The New-York
Tribune,
March 17, 1854.)
The first two volumes were advertised as
early
as October of 1849,
but
were probably not actually available until about January 10, 1850. (In
the first editions, both volumes carry the copyright date of 1849. In
later
editions, volume I continues to carry the 1849 copyright, while volume
II carries a copyright date of 1850. A notice from the Richmond Whig
and
Public Advertiser for October 30, 1849 requests anyone with letters
from
Poe to forward them to Griswold through J. R. Thompson, and states,
"Two
volumes of the Works of Mr. Poe, comprising about 1000 pages, will be
issued
under Mr. Griswold's supervision, in New York, in about 4 weeks." An
advertisement
in the New-York Tribune of January 9, 1850 announces that the
volumes
will be published on January 10, 1850. A brief but very favorable
review
appeared in The Dollar Newspaper (Philadelphia) of January 16,
1850,
just three days before what would have been Poe's 41st birthday.) It
seems
to have sold well, as a second printing was required within four
months.
(J. H Whitty, in printing J. R. Thompson's The Genius and Character
of Edgar Allan Poe, includes a letter of February 19, 1850 to
Thompson
from Griswold (pp. 54-56) in which Griswold claims that the first two
volumes
have not been selling.)
The third volume was first issued on
September
21, 1850. (The
"Preface"
is dated "New-York, September 2, 1850." The New York Tribune
for
September 19, 1850 notes that the volume will be available in two
days.)
Griswold claimed that it required more editorial work than the first
two
volumes. In the same letter to Thompson, mentioned above, he notes
"Yet,
I am preparing a third volume, which I propose to entitle Literary
Characters,
Marginalia, and Discourses of the late E. A. Poe, the third and
concluding
volume of his works" (p. 55). Griswold continues, "Under the head of
Literary
Characters I propose to place not only the notices of men and women
which
he himself printed under the title, but the more personal reviews which
I can identify in the S. L. M, Graham's Magazine, The
Whig-Review,
&c. In the Marginalia I shall include the various series of
thoughts
and suggestions which he published in this form and has not repeated in
his more elaborate performances" (p. 55). There has been some
discussion
as to whether volume III was initially sold as a continuation of the
prior
two volumes or as a separate book. The title page of the 1850 edition
does
not bear any indication of being volume III, although bindings often do
carry the designation of "Vol. 3." Some of these books have clearly
been
rebound by owners seeking to have a unified appearance for the set.
Others,
however, appear to be original publishers' bindings. It is not unlikely
that the book was available both ways, or that the publishers provided
a binding based on the preference of the buyer. An advertisement in
Thomas
Wrights's book Narratives of Sorcery and Magic (New York: J. S.
Redfield, 1852, mentioned in the Poe Catalogue of the 19th Century
Shop,
1992, as item #655) shows that the first two volumes were still being
sold
separately from the third volume (for $2.50).
In 1852, all three volumes were
reprinted
exactly as they were
issued
in 1850. (Only the date on the title page was changed.) In 1853, a
number
of modifications were made to reshape the three books into a cohesive
set.
In this process, the "Preface" and "Memoir" were relocated from volume
III to volume I and "The Poetic Principle" moved to volume II. In
repositioning
"The Poetic Principle," which had been at the front of volume III, the
printer renumbered the pages of the essay as prefatory material (pages
vii - xxvi) but left volume III starting at page 21. (This anomaly was
left unchanged in future printings.) The title page of volume II was
changed
from "Poems and Miscellanies" to "Poems and Tales," and the copyright
date
on the back of the title page changed from 1849 to 1850. The title of
volume
III was also changed at this time to simply "The Literati," and
was
clearly marked as volume III. In this form, the three volumes were
again
reprinted in 1855.
In spite of Griswold's statement to
Thompson
that the third volume
was
to be the final one, a fourth volume was issued in 1856, one year
before
Griswold's own death. (The "Preface" for this volume is dated "New
York, Feb.
13, 1856.") The chief item in this volume was "The Narrative of Arthur
Gordon Pym." Griswold had apparently debated as to whether or not to
include
this work in the set as early as 1849. On November 3, 1849, Mrs. Lewis
wrote to him, "I have read carefully 'Arthur Gordon Pym.' It is not
written
with the care and classic finish that characterize 'The Gold Bug,' and
'The House of Usher,' but with more freshness and dramatic effect. The
interest never lags. The movement is almost constant. I think that a
collection
of Mr. Poe's Tales will be incomplete without it" (quoted by Bayless,
p.
283-284, n 24). Many sets combine this one volume with earlier
printings
of the previous three. (A number of obvious typographical errors,
especially
in "Pym," remained through several subsequent printings. These were
corrected
when W. J. Widdleton printed its slightly revised edition in 1861.)
There
are nearly annual reprints of the full four-volume set: 1857-1861,
1863-1870, and a final reprint in 1871, when Mrs. Clemm died. It was
briefly suspended, until John Ingram's revisions
in 1874-1875, with Ingram's far more sympathetic account of Poe's life
replacing Griswold's "Memoir." (After 1871, the one-page notice by
Maria Clemm
"To
The Reader" was also removed.)
An 1859 edition, clearly from the
Redfield
plates, was printed by
the
New York firm of Blakeman & Mason. By 1861, Redfield had sold the
rights
to W. J. Widdleton, which modified the title of the volumes to "The
Works
of Edgar Allan Poe," dropping the phrase "The Late," but retaining the
Redfield copyright, lamp and serpent logo, Griswold's "Memoir of the
Author"
and the "To the Reader" notice by Maria Clemm. Widdleton reapplied for
the copyright in 1876 and continued to issue both the full set and a
single
volume of poems until about 1882, when the rights were acquired by W.
C.
Bush. In 1884, Bush sold the rights to A. C. Armstrong & Sons
(owned
by Andrew C. Armstrong), which issued Poe's writings in several forms,
most notably a six volume set with additional material and also a new
memoir,
by Richard Henry Stoddard. Armstrong appears to have sold the rights to
George Putnam's Sons about 1902. Several years earlier (1894-1895),
George
Edward Woodberry and Edmund Clarence Stedman had created a new edition
of Poe's works, extending the collection to 10 volumes. These editors
were
aware of concerns raised by John H. Ingram (1874) and W. F. Gill (1878)
that Griswold had tampered with Poe's writings. Their "General Preface"
(signed "The Editors" and dated "New York, Oct. 28, 1894") deals with
this
concern by stating that "in view of the contemporary uncertainty of
Poe's
fame, the difficulty of obtaining a publisher, and the fact that the
editorial
work was not paid for, little fault can justly be found with Griswold,
who did secure what Poe in his lifetime could never accomplish, — a
tolerably
complete collected edition of the tales, reviews, and poems" (Woodberry
and Stedman, "General Preface," 1894-1896, p. v.). (Ironically,
Woodberry
and Stedman even begin their first volume with a frontispiece engraving
of the same portrait of Poe used by Griswold in his edition.) More
recently,
Burton Pollin contradicts Woodberry's insistence that Griswold had
undertaken
the editing of Poe's works out of a sense of charity, noting "Everyone
soon knew of the great benefit to editor Griswold, in both income and
reputation,
brought by this large, lavish volume . . . " (Pollin, 1991, p. 151).
Given Griswold's notorious "memoir" of
Poe and
numerous variations
from
earlier printings, the debate about the authority of the Griswold
texts continued. James Albert Harrison, for example, commented in his
1902
edition of Poe's works, "After a thorough examination of all the
existing
editions of Poe's works, the editor became convinced that no
satisfactory
text of the poet's writings could be established without direct study
of
the original sources in which these writings first and last appeared.
Existing
editions conflicted in so many points that no course was left except to
reject them all — beginning with Griswold, whom all had more or less
faithfully followed
. . . " (Harrison, "Editor's Preface," 1902, vol. I, p. vii.)
Part
of this distrust may be due to a problem noted by Mabbott: "At some
time
after 1853, something happened, some accident to the type, to introduce
a number of new errors, especially in Volume I between pages 131 and
213.
These errors are recorded as Griswold's in the variants of Harrison's Complete
works of Poe (1902). Apparently one of the 'defective' later copies
of Works was used for collation, and the errors in it were, no doubt,
one
of the reasons R. A. Stewart (Harrison II, 299) called the Works
'very defective in typography.' The texts therein are not free from
errors,
but a comparison of the original 1850 Works text with the
original
Broadway Journal texts shows by far more typographical errors in the
latter"
(Mabbott, Tales and Sketches, 1978, p. 1400).
Reviewing the Harrison edition in
1902,
Woodberry again
emphasized
Griswold's "lack of motive." (This review is not signed, but Killis
Campbell
identifies it as by G. E. Woodberry in The Mind of Poe and Other
Studies,
1933, p. 95, note 1. The tone and contents of the review strongly
support
this attribution.) Woodberry goes on to say, "The truth is, that the
editor's
[Harrison's] prejudice against Griswold has led him to reject Poe's own
late and mature revision of his major critical writing in favor of
these
early, scattered, and fragmentary forms in which they appeared in the
magazines
in their original helter-skelter production. . . . In conclusion, it
must
be held that Griswold's authority, so far from being impaired, is
strengthened
by the present attack on him, and that the edition itself suffers in
just
that proportion in which it departs from him in substance. In any
discussion
of the text of Poe the primary fact should never be lost sight of,
namely,
that Griswold had Poe's papers, as collected and prepared by Poe
himself.
. ." (Woodberry, The Nation, p. 446).
Perhaps in a further response to
Harrison, a
revised reprint was
issued
in 1903 of the landmark 10-volume edition prepared in 1894-1895 by
Woodberry
and Stedman. They repeated their earlier "General Preface" (now dated
"New
York, October 1, 1902) and added several sentences to the end: "On
reviewing
their work, the editors feel assured that the present edition embodies
Poe's writings, both as to substance and form, in the way that he
desired
when he intrusted [sic] them to his literary executor, Dr. Griswold. It
would be possible to expand the critical portion of his works
indefinitely
by collecting the large number of his early reviews; but nothing of
value
would thereby be added, as he himself included in his later notices all
that was not purely contemporary and transitory in these; in 'The
Literati'
especially, and its cognate pieces, he had summed up his lifelong
critical
work in the form in which he desired it to survive. It is with
confidence,
therefore, that the editors present this edition as complete and
definitive"
(Woodberry and Stedman, "General Preface," 1903, p. xi.)
Rather more succinctly, T. O. Mabbott
stated,
"Harrison distrusted
Griswold
and all his works, and preferred the periodicals when it was possible
to
use them, although he accepted the extensive changes of 'The Balloon
Hoax'
and several other pieces. Griswold's tampering with texts of letters
discredits
him badly. But no evidence of mistreatment of the text of the tales can
be found, and, after all, the man had no motive to alter Poe's fiction"
(Mabbott, Tales and Sketches, 1978, p. 1400, footnote.) George
E.
Hatvary makes an even bolder statement: "Since the Harrison text [of
the
essay "Fifty Suggestions"] is identical to the Griswold text, it is
clear
that, notwithstanding his frequent disparagement of Griswold's editing,
Harrison, while creating the impression that he was going back to the
original
version, was actually basing his text on Griswold's" (Hatvary, 1971, p.
47).
As Mabbott points out elsewhere,
however,
Griswold's text cannot be
considered definitive as he did not always have copies of Poe's latest
corrections and, particularly in volume III, seems to have imposed a
somewhat
heavier editorial hand. In a few cases, he may even have manipulated
some
of the material to support charges made in his "memoir" of Poe. Edward
H. O'Neill, examining the text of Poe's "Marginalia," commented
"Griswold
must have known of the various installments of 'Marginalia' published
by
Poe, though he made no attempt to print them as they originally
appeared.
Instead, . . . he made a new text, dropping and adding for no apparent
reason" (E. H. O'Neill, "The Poe-Griswold-Harrison Texts of the
'Marginalia'," American
Literature, pp. 238-250). This charge is mostly unfounded, as
Griswold
likely was following manuscript notes left by Poe for a proposed but
never
completed edition variously called "A Critical History of American
Literature,"
"The American Parnassus" and "Literary America." (O'Neill acknowledges
this possibility on p. 246 of his article: "It may be that Griswold
prepared
his 'Marginalia' from notes or revised manuscripts which have
disappeared.")
In this effort, Poe himself had somewhat haphazardly cut and pasted
material
from various reviews, the "Literati" papers and his "Marginalia"
series.
The final product, at least as it stood when Poe seems to have
abandoned
it in 1848, was certainly not ready for publication and its full form,
and Griswold's modifications to it, will never fully be known since
only
parts of the manuscript have survived intact. Whether or not Poe
intended
to include the five special items not printed as part of the original
"Literati"
series of 1846 (namely those for "Charles F. Briggs," "James Lawson,"
"Frances
Sargent Osgood," "Mary E. Hewitt" and especially "Thomas Dunn Brown
[English]")
cannot now be conclusively ascertained. In a footnote, Burton Pollin
comments
"Poe clearly intended to include all or many of his Literati sketches
of
1846 in 'Literary America,' as Griswold knew from the copies in Poe's
literary
remains. His substitution of these five papers was not a fraud or
deception
as James Harrison said" (Pollin, 1991, p. 161, note 18). In the same
footnote,
Pollin also quotes from a penciled note in Mabbott's own set of
Harrison's
edition of Poe's works: "All are undeniably Poe's save, perhaps, for a
small interpolation (on English) by . . . Griswold."
Whichever side one favors in the debate,
there
is no doubting the
important
and influential position of this collection in the history of Poe's
literary
legacy. Dismissing the "Memoir," the Griswold edition of Poe's works
remains
a significant archive of Poe's writings, embodying some revisions which
might otherwise have been entirely lost.
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