Edgar Allan Poe — “The Assignation”

Reading copy:

• “The Assignation” — reading copy

Manuscripts and Authorized Printings:

• Text-01 — “The Visionary” — 1832, no original manuscript or fragments are known to exist (but this version is presumably recorded in Text-02)
• Text-02 — “The Visionary” — January 1834 — Lady’s Book [Godey’s Lady’s Book] — (Mabbott text A)
• Text-03 — “The Visionary” — July 1835 — Southern Literary Messenger — (Mabbott text B)
• Text-04 — “The Visionary” — about 1839 — manuscript revisions in “Duane” copy of Southern Literary Messenger — (Mabbott text C)
• Text-05 — “The Visionary” — 1840 — TGA — (Mabbott text D)
• Text-06 — “The Assignation” — 1842 — manuscript title revision in TGAPP (volume II, which seems to have had revisions by Poe, is lost. but this version is presumably recorded in Text-07)
• Text-07 — “The Assignation” — June 7, 1845 — Broadway Journal — (Mabbott text E)  (For Griswold’s 1850 reprinting of this text, see the entry below, under reprints.)

Reprints:

• “The Visionary” — December 1840 — Bentley’s Miscellany (from Text-05, unacknowledged)
• “The Assignation”— 1850 — WORKS — Griswold merely reprints Text-07 (Mabbott text F)  (This is Mabbott’s copy-text) (Although the Griswold text contains numerous changes in punctuation, these appear to be editorial and typographical rather than authorial changes, and a number of them are not improvements)
• “The Assignation” — 1867 — Prose Tales of Edgar Allan Poe, first series (New York: W. J. Widdleton), pp. 370-381 (This collection is extracted from the 1850-1856 edition of Poe’s Works. It was reprinted several times.)
• “The Assignation” — 1874 — Works of Edgar A. Poe, edited by J. H. Ingram, vol. 1, pp. 284-296 (This collection was subsequently reprinted in various forms)

Scholarly and Noteworthy Reprints:

• “The Assignation” — 1894-1895 — The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 1: Tales, ed. G. E. Woodberry and E. C. Stedman, Chicago: Stone and Kimball (1:258-273) (This collection was subsequently reprinted in various forms)
• “The Assignation (The Visionary)” — 1902 — The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 2: Tales I, ed. J. A. Harrison, New York: T. Y. Crowell (2:1-109-124, and 2:345-348)
• “The Visionary (The Assignation)” — 1978 — The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 2: Tales & Sketches I, ed. T. O. Mabbott, Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2:148-169)
• “The Assignation” — 1984 — Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry and Tales, ed. Patrick F. Quinn (New York: Library of America), pp. 200-211

Instream Comparative and Study Texts:

• “The Visionary” — Study Text (SLM-WMD)
• “The Visionary” — Comparative Text (SLM, SLM-WMD and TGA)
• “The Assignation” — Comparative Text (BJ and WORKS)

Miscellaneous Texts and Related Items:

• “Le rendez-vous” — 1862 — Contes inedts d‘Edgar Poe, Paris: J. Hetzel  (French translation by William L. Hughes)
• “[The Assignation]” — 1881 — Underliga historier (Stockholm)  (Swedish translation, noted by Anderson, p. 54)
• “Le Rendez-vous” — 1934 — Les Sphinx et autres contes bizarres par Edgar Poë, Paris: Galliard (French translation by Maurice Sachs)
• “Le Visionnaire (Le Rendez-vous)” — 1950 — Histories grotesques et sérieuse par Edgar Poe, Paris: Classiques Garnier  (French translation by Léon Lemonnier)
• ”The Assignation” — 1952 — a possible film adaptation directed by Joseph Losey, but unseen and perhaps merely a coincidental title (see Smith, p. 83).

• Anderson, Carl L., Poe in Northlight: The Scandanavian Response to His Life and Work, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1973.
• Benton, Richard P., “Is Poe’s ‘The Assignation’ a Hoax?,” Nineteenth-Century Fiction (Sept. 1963), 18:193-197.
• Cobb, Palmer, “The Influence of E. A. T. Hoffman on the Tales of Edgar Allan Poe,” Studies in Philology, 1908, 3:1-104
• Dixon, Jeanne, “Poe: A Borrowing from Goldsmith,” Notes & Queries (Nov. 12, 1932), 163:350
• Engstrom, Alfred G., “Chateaubriand’s Itineraire de Paris a Jerusalem and Poe’s ‘The Assignation’,” Modern Language Notes (Nov. 1954), 69:506-507
• 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.
• Ketterer, David, “The Sexual Abyss: Consumation in ‘The Assignation’,” Poe Studies (1986), 19:7-10
• Mabbott, Thomas Ollive, ed., The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe (Vols 2-3 Tales and Sketches), Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1978.
• Pahl, Dennis, “Recovering Byron: Poe’s ‘The Assignation’,” Criticism (1984), 26:211-229
• Pitcher, Edward W., “Poe’s ‘The Assignation‘: A Reconsideration,” Poe Studies (1980), 13:1-4
• Smith, Don. G., The Poe Cinema, Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 1999.
• Whitt, Celia, “Poe and The Mysteries of Udolpho,” University of Texas Studies in English (1937), 18:124-131
• Wyllie, John Cooke, “A List of the Texts of Poe’s Tales,” Humanistic Studies in Honor of John Calvin Metcalf, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1941, pp. 322-338.
• Zorzi, Rosella Mamoli, “The Text Is the City: The Representation of Venice in Two Tales by Irving and Poe and a Novel by Cooper,” Revista d’studi Anglo-Americani (1990), 6:285-300.