Poems by Edgar A. Poe (1831)

12mo. (6 1/8 in x 3 7/8 in or 6 3/4 in x 3 3/4 in). Pages [1]-124. Bindings: Olive-green or tan linen. (Heartman and Canny also note gray and black cloth bindings.) State “A” has “THE END” at the bottom of page 124, missing from state “B”. (On page 83, the title of the poem is misspelled “Al Araaf”; the footnote on page 88 does not identify the chaper and verse (chapter 5, verse 8); page 105 is incorrectly numbered 150. Heartman and Canny note that some copies have corrections for all of these errors.)

This census records about half of the known surviving copies of Poems. The provenance of each entry is established as authoritatively as possible, given the sketchy and often convoluted bits of information available. In nearly all case, the chain of owners has gaps, especially among the early owners, whose names are generally known only if the owner left an inscription.

• Susan Jaffe Tane, private collector, New York. (Presentation copy from Poe to John Neal. Rebound with W. G. Simm’s Vision of Cortes.) The list of prior owners is as follows: 1. John Neal (1793-1876), Portland, Maine; 2. Richard Henry Stoddard (1825-1903), New York editor and critic (with an autograph receipt from Stoddard); 3. R. W. Gredes (purchased through Mr. Coombes, September 29, 1880 for $50.); 4. Frederick Locker-Lampson (1821-1895), English Poet (with Mr. Locker-Lampson’s bookplate); 5. Elihu Dwight Church (1835-1908), New York (purchased in 1905); 6. Stephen H. Wakeman (1859-1924), New York; 7. Mrs. Florence Meyer Blumenthal (1875-1930) of Paris (purchased April 28-29, 1924, lot 935 for $500. In April 1931, George Blumenthal offered the collection for sale through A. S. W. Rosenbach, but withdrew it); 8. Gabriel Wells, New York bookseller, (purchased in March or April 1933 along with the Blumenthal’s entire collection, paying $50,000 for all items); 9. H. Bradley Martin (1906-1988) (Martin purchased the entire collection of Poe material offered by Wells about 1940) (a leaf of notes, written by Martin, also accompanies the book); 10. John McGuigan (purchased January 30-31, 1990 at Sotheby auction in New York). 11. Susan Jaffe Tane, private collector, New York (purchased from Biblioctopus, Century City, CA.)
• Alderman Library, University of Virginia (gift of Clifton Waller Barrett, about April 19, 1952)
• Albert Berg Collection, New York Public Library (Theodore S. Fay (1807-1898) copy.) (Fay to David Graham, Jr. (1808-1852), New York lawyer; Gouveneur Kemble; Jacob Chester Chamberlain (sold Feb. 16, 1909 for $410); Owen D. Young; Albert Ashton Berg (1872-1950) (Dr. Berg paid Young half the value of his collection, and they collectively donated the material to the NYPL on May 8, 1941.)
• Albert Berg Collection, New York Public Library (duplicate) (Berg-Howe copy) (owned by William Thomas Hildrup Howe (1874-1939) by 1932. Dr. Berg purchased Howe’s collection in September 1940, and donated his own collection to the NYPL in October 1940.)
• Poe Foundation, Richmond, VA (orignially owned by John Pendleton Hardin (1810-1842, West Point Class of 1832), and his father, Ben Hardin, Jr. (1784-1852), presented by Ben Hardin to someone unspecified; Jacob Chester Chamberlain (1860-1905) (sold at the auction of his library, Anderson Auction, February 16, 1909, item 706, for $315; Walter Thomas Wallace of South Orange, New Jersey (sold at auction, American Art Galleries, March 22-25, 1920, item 1029, for $140); John Wooster Robertson (1856-1941) (apparently purchased through the assistance of book dealer Walter Martin Hill) donated to the Poe Museum by Robertson in 1927. (This copy bears a note, presumably by Ben Hardin, “This book is a damn cheat. All that fills 124 pages could have been compiled in 36.” A comment below it, apparently in another hand, reads “Lie” and a note further below that: “Calliope is a cheat any how —” Calliope was the name of the Greek muse of epic poetry, a classical reference that Poe might well have appreciated.)
• Harvard College Library (acquisition stamped December 20, 1917. Name of early owner inscribed on reverse of title page “W. A. White,” probably William Augustus White (1843-1927). Perhaps donated by White to Harvard. The book is stamped on the back of the title page “Harvard College Library, Dec. 20 1917.”  (This is the copy which was used for the 1936 facsimile, edited by K. Campbell.)
• University of Texas. (Paul Hyde Bonner, sold October 1931, perhaps through New York dealer Harry Stone, for around $7,000; William H. Koester) (H&C, 1941, state that it was sold at auction by American Art. Association, on February 16, 1934)
• University of Texas (another copy);  prior owners: Charles Benjamin Foote (1837-1900); John H. Wrenn (1833-1911), Chicago (purchased at the Foote sale on November 23, 1894, item 206, for $55. Foote purchased his copy from a sale of the library of General Winfield Scott.) (The Wrenn library found a new home in Austin, TX in 1918) One page is apparently supplied in facsimile, and the volume has been rebound in morocco by Matthews, and in a slip case.
• Josiah Kirby Lilly (1893-1966) (purchased from Charles E. Goodspeed in 1930 for $3,700) (This copy bears an inscription date of December 1831, and the name “Edger [sic] A. Poe” written at the bottom of page 64, almost certainly not in Poe’s own hand. This copy also lacks a blank fly leaf, but is bound in the original cloth. The lower part of the blank margins has a slight stain.)
• American Antiquarian Society. George Brinley (1817-1875), Hartford, CT (sold in 1886 for $150); Thomas Jefferson McKee (1840-1899) (sold on Nov. 22-23, 1900, item 593, for $360); Frederic Robert Halsey (1847-1918); Henry E. Huntington; Alfred Edward Newton (1864-1940) (sold in 1941); Thomas Winthrop Streeter (1883-1965) (who donated the book to the AAS in 1952). (This copy lacks a blank fly leaf. It bears the label Brinley 6915. Also has the bookplate of Francis Joseph Hogan (1877-1944).)
• Gimbel Collection. Philadelphia Free Public Library. (This may be the John A. Spoor-Thomas & Eron copy, noted by H&C as unlocated in 1943)
• West Point (a copy obtained in June 1966 through well-known book dealer John Fleming)
• Robert Eden Martin (1940-) (Daniel Powers Whiting (1808-1892), 1831. Although Whiting was a cadet, he apparently did not contribute to the subscription for the Poems, based on the pay records at West Point. On the title page, below Poe’s name, Whiting wrote: “a premature graduate from U. S. M. A. of last Jan. Testimony (?) of insatiable ambition, as this book will show, but of what merit, reader, judge for yourself.” Sending the book to his parents, Whiting added a note on an inside page: “Mr. and Mrs. Whiting” with a “greeting” and the note: “This thing may afford you some amusement. It was a present to me, but the price was ten shillings.”) Mr. Martin purchased the book from a Sotheby’s auction in 1997.
• Library of Congress (presumably the copy deposited for copyright).
• Brown University (Harris Collection of American Poetry and Plays) (This may be the copy sold at auction from the library of Judge Albert Gorton Greene (1802-1868), Cleveland, OH, Bangs, Merwin & Co., March 29, 1869, item 1396.) (Brown University owned the copy as early as 1932.)

In additon to the entries listed above, there are early sales reports of several copies that are presumably accounted for above but not clearly associated with the chain of provenance for any of these copies.

• George Shipman Payson (1862-1943), of Chicago, IL, sold by Andersen (NY), January 7-8, 1913, item 386, for $140. (The blank corner of the title page has been restored. The book itself has been washed and resewn, with new end papers supplied.)
• Bangs & Co. (New York, NY), January 14-16, 1895 (in original cloth binding, in a morocco case), item 573, noted in ABC as sold for $100); Bangs & Co. (New York, NY), February 3, 1896 (in original cloth binding, in a morocco case, presumably the same as the prior sale, noted in ABC as sold for $60)