Edgar Allan Poe — “The Man that was Used Up”

Reading copy:

• “The Man that was Used Up” — reading copy

Manuscripts and Authorized Printings:

• Text-01 — “The Man that was Used Up” — 1839, no original manuscript or fragments are known to exist (but this version is presumably recorded in Text-02)
• Text-02 — “The Man that was Used Up” — August 1839 — Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine (BGM) — (Mabbott text A) (In a letter to P. P. Cooke, Poe mentions that he is sending copies of the July, August, and September 1839 issues of Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, but in Cooke’s reply it is clear that he is responding only to the stories as printed in Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, of which Poe had sent Cooke an inscribed copy. He does not mention “The Man that was Used Up.” There is no reason to suspect that any of these magazine copies contained manuscript revisions by Poe.)
• Text-03 — “The Man that was Used Up” — 1839-1840 — (speculated copy of Burton’s with manuscript changes made by Poe in preparing for the printing in TGA. This copy has not survived, but is presumably recorded in Text-04.)
• Text-04 — “The Man that was Used Up” — 1840 — TGA — (Mabbott text B)
• Text-05 — “The Man that was Used Up” — 1842 — TGAPP — (Mabbott text C)  (This version is a modified form of Text-04)
• Text-06 — “The Man that was Used Up” — 1843 — PRRMS — (Mabbott text D) (While this text is based on TGAPP, a few small verbal changes have apparently been applied in proof)
• Text-07 — “The Man that was Used Up” — 1843-1845 — (speculated copy of PRRMS with manuscript changes made by Poe in preparing for the printing in the Broadway Journal. This copy has not survived, but is presumably recorded in Text-08.) (Poe appears to have sent this copy of PRRMS to E. A. Duyckinck for consideration in what would become the 1845 collection of TALES published by Wiley and Putnam. In this presumed copy, Poe must have marked the text for both items included in this little pamphlet. Of the two tales, Duyckinck selected only “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” In preparing the 1845 collection of TALES, the pages containing “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” were destroyed, which included the initial part of “The Man that was Used Up,” which began further down the page from the last paragraph of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Consequently, in printing the story in the Broadway Journal, Poe had to use TGAPP for the first few paragraphs, including the newly added motto, but without using some of the minor changes marked in TGAPP.)
• Text-08 — “The Man That Was Used Up” — August 9, 1845 — Broadway Journal — (Mabbott text E) (For Griswold’s 1856 reprinting of this text, see the entry below, under reprints.)

Reprints:

• “The Man That Was Used Up” — September 12-13, 1845 — The Spirit of the Times
  • “The Man That Was Used Up” — Part I   (September 12, 1845)
  • “The Man That Was Used Up” — Part II  (September 13, 1845)
• “The Man that was Used Up” — 1856 — WORKS — Griswold reprints Text-08 (Mabbott text F)  (This is Mabbott’s copy-text)
• “The Man That Was Used Up” — 1867 — Prose Tales of Edgar Allan Poe, second series (New York: W. J. Widdleton), pp. 478-488 (This collection is extracted from the 1850-1856 edition of Poe’s Works. It was reprinted several times.)
• “The Man That Was Used Up” — 1874 — Works of Edgar A. Poe, edited by J. H. Ingram, vol. 2, pp. 549-559 (This collection was subsequently reprinted in various forms)

Scholarly and Noteworthy Reprints:

• “The Man that was Used Up” — 1894-1895 — The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 4: Tales, eds. E. C. Stedman and G. E. Woodberry, Chicago: Stone and Kimball (4:44-57) (This collection was subsequently reprinted in various forms)
• “The Man that was Used Up” — 1902 — The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 3: Tales II, ed. J. A. Harrison, New York: T. Y. Crowell (3:259-272, and 3:335-338)
• “The Man that was Used Up” — 1978 — The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 2: Tales & Sketches I, ed. T. O. Mabbott, Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2:378-392)
• “The Man That Was Used Up” — 1984 — Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry and Tales, ed. Patrick F. Quinn (New York: Library of America), pp. 307-316

Instream Comparative and Study Texts:

• “The Man that was Used Up” — Comparative Text (BGM and TGA)
• “The Man that was Used Up” — Study Text (TGAPP)
• “The Man that was Used Up” — Comparative Text (TGAPP and PRRMS)
• “The Man that was Used Up” — Comparative Text (TGA/PRRMS and BJ)
• “The Man that was Used Up” — Comparative Text (BJ and WORKS)

Miscellaneous Texts and Related Items:

• “The Man That Was Used Up” — September 9, 1843 — The New Mirror  (unauthorized abridgement from Text-05)
• “Un homme usé” — 1862 — Contes inedts d‘Edgar Poe, Paris: J. Hetzel  (French translation by William L. Hughes)
• “L‘homme tout usé” — 1914 — Edgar Poe: Histories étranges et Merrveilleuses, Paris: Mercure de France (French translation by M. D. Calvocoressi)
• “L‘Homme dont il ne restait rien” — 1934 — Les Sphinx et autres contes bizarres par Edgar Poë, Paris: Galliard (French translation by Maurice Sachs)
• “L‘Homme dont il ne restait rein” — 1950 — Histories grotesques et sérieuse par Edgar Poe, Paris: Classiques Garnier  (French translation by Léon Lemonnier)

• Abel, Darrell, “Le Sage’s Limping Devil and Mrs. Bullfrog,” Notes & Queries, April 1953, 198:165-166.
• Alekna, Richard A., “ ‘The Man That Was Used Up’: Further Notes on Poe’s Satirical Targets,” Poe Studies, 1979, 12:36
• Curran, Robert T., “The Fashionable Thirties: Poe’s Satire in ‘The Man That Was Used Up’,” Markham Review, 1978, 8:14-20
• Hatvary, George E., “Introduction,” Edgar Allan Poe’s Prose Romances: The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Man That Was Used Up (a photographic facsimile edition),  eds. George E. Hatvary and Thomas Ollive Mabbott, New York: St. John’s University Press,1968, pp. i-vi
• 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, “Poe’s ‘The Man That Was Used Up’,” Explicator, April 1967, vol. 25, item 70
• 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.
• Mead, Joan Tyler, “Poe’s ‘The Man That Was Used Up’: Another Bugaboo Campaign,” Studies in Short Fiction, 1986, 23:281-286.
• Mooney, Stephen L., “The Comic in Poe’s Fiction,” American Literature, January 1962, 33:433-441.
• Pry, Elmer L., “A Folklore Source for ‘The Man That Was Used Up,” Poe Studies, 1975, 8:46
• Purdy, S. B., “Poe and Dostoyevsky,” Studies in Short Fiction, Winter 1967, 4:169-171.
• Rouge, Bertrand, “La Pratique des corps limites chez Poe: La Verite sur le cas de ‘The Man That Was Used Up,” Poetique, 1984, 15:473-488
• Varner, Cornelia, “Notes on Poe’s Use of Contemporary Materials in Certain of his Stories,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology, January 1933, 32:77-80.
• Wetzel, George, “The Source of Poe’s ‘The Man That Was Used Up’,” Notes & Queries, January 1953, 198:38.
• Whipple, William, “Poe’s Political Satire,” University of Texas Studies in English, 1956, 35:81-95.
• 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.