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Edgar Allan Poe — “Deep in Earth”






Texts and Variant Texts

Reading copy:
  • “Deep in Earth” — reading copy (copy-text is based on Text 00)

Manuscripts and Authorized Printings:
  • "[Deep in Earth]" — about February 1847 — manuscript — Text 01  (Mabbott text A)  (This is Mabbott's copytext)

Reprints:
  • "[Deep in Earth]" — December 1914 — Bulletin of the New York Public Library (18:1462)
  • "Couplet" — 1917 — The Complete Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. J. H. Whitty, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co (p. 152, and pp. 321-322)  (This poem was added to the second edition, and does not appear in the first edition of 1911)
  • "[Deep in Earth]" — 1969 — The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. I: Poems, ed. Thomas Ollive Mabbott, Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (1:396)

Associated Material and Special versions:
  • None











This short poem was written by Poe in pencil on a manuscript pasted to a manuscript of "Eulalie." It was never printed during his lifetime. It was first discovered in October 1914 and published in December 1914. The manuscript came to the collection of the New York Public Libray in 1892, from the collection of R. L. Stuart, by which time it had come to be part of an autograph album. J. H. Whitty states that "it is a conjecture that the lines were written in the year 1845, although they may date after the death of Poe's wife in 1847." Mabbott accepts the later date of 1847, tying the couplet to the death of Poe's wife Virginia, and thus establishing a likely date as about February 1847. (The earlier suggested date of 1845 perhaps comes from the connection to the Eulalie manuscript, that poem having been published in the American Review in 1845.)








Bibliography:
  • 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.
  • Mabbott, Thomas Ollive, ed., The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe (Vol 1 Poems), Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969.



 
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