Edgar Allan Poe — “Silence — A Fable”

Reading copy:

• “Silence — A Fable” — reading copy

Manuscripts and Authorized Printings:

• Text-01 — “Siope — A Fable” — about 1832 — manuscript fragment — (Mabbott text A)
• Text-02 — “Siope — A Fable” — 1838 — The Baltimore Book — (Mabbott text B)  (The Baltimore Book was reissued in 1839, with a new title page. Presumably sales of the annual were poor, and no further editions were issued in subsequent years.)
• Text-03 — “Siope. A Fable” — 1840 — TGA — (Mabbott text C)
• Text-04 — “Silence — A Fable” — 1842 — manuscript title revision in TGAPP — (The tale is listed, under its new title, in Poe’s handwritten table of contents, but the modified version of volume II of TGA no longer survives. The text is presumably recorded, with perhaps a few additional changes made in proof, in Text-05)
• Text-05 — “Silence — A Fable” — September 6, 1845 — Broadway Journal — (Mabbott text D) (For Griswold’s 1850 reprinting of this text, see the entry below, under reprints.)

Reprints:

• “Silence. — A Fable” — 1850 — WORKS — Griswold reprints Text-05 (Mabbott text E)  (This is Mabbott’s copy-text)  (Although Mabbott asserts that Griswold’s text “shows one presumably authorial change,” it seems more likely to be an editorial change, and thus made by either Griswold or one of his typesetters.)
• “Silence. — A Fable” — 1867 — Prose Tales of Edgar Allan Poe, second series (New York: W. J. Widdleton), pp. 6-9 (This collection is extracted from the 1850-1856 edition of Poe’s Works. It was reprinted several times.)
• “Silence. — A Fable” — 1874 — Works of Edgar A. Poe, edited by J. H. Ingram (vol. II, pp. 213-216) (This collection was subsequently reprinted in various forms)

Scholarly and Noteworthy Reprints:

• “Silence — A Fable” — 1894-1895 — The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 1: Tales I, ed. G. E. Woodberry and E. C. Stedman, Chicago: Stone and Kimball (1:242-246)
• “Silence. A Fable” — 1902 — The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 2: Tales I, ed. J. A. Harrison, New York: T. Y. Crowell (2:220-224, and 2:380-382)
• “Siope (Silence)” — 1978 — The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 2: Tales & Sketches I, ed. T. O. Mabbott, Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2:192-200)
• “Silence — A Fable” — 1984 — Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry and Tales, Patrick F. Quinn (New York: Library of America), pp. 221-224

Instream Comparative Texts:

• None.

Plain Text Files for Juxta:

• None.

Miscellaneous Texts and Related Items:

• “Silence” — (French translation by Charles Baudelaire)
  • “Le Silence” — February 22, 1855 — Le Pays
  • “Silence” — 1857 — Nouvelles histoires par Edgar Poe, Paris: Michel Lévy frères
• “Stilte” — about 1930 — Fantastische Vertellingen van Edgar Allan Poe, Haarlem: H. D. Tjeenk Willink & Zoon (Dutch translation by Machiel Elias Barentz, with elaborate illustrations by Albert Hahn, somewhat reminiscent of those by Harry Clarke)
• “Silence — A Fable” — 2010 — Audio book, read by Chris Aruffo

• Basler, Roy P., “Poe’s Dream Imagery,” Sex, Symbolism and Psychology in Literature, New Brunswick: Rugers University Press, 1948, pp. 177-200
• Burduck, Michael M., “Justifying the Ways of Death to Men: Milton’s Influence on Poe’s ’shadow — A Parable’ and ’silence — A Fable’,” in Perspectives on Poe, ed. D. Ramakrishna, New Delhi: APC Publications, 1996, pp. 181-190
• Cantalupo, Barbara, “The Lynx in Poe’s ’silence’,” Poe Studies/Dark Romanticism, 1994, 27:1-4
• Claudel, Alice M., “What has Poe’s ’silence — A Fable’ to Say?,” Ball State University Forum, 1969, 10:66-70
• 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 (Vols 2-3 Tales and Sketches), Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1978.
• Pittman, Diana, “ ’silence — A Fable’,” Southern Literary Messenger, 1941, 3:418-422  (this is the new series of the journal)
• Thompson, G. Richard, “ ’silence — A Fable’ and the Folio Club: Who Were the ‘Psychological Autobiographists‘?,” Poe Newsletter, January 1969, 2:23
• 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.