Edgar Allan Poe — “The Conversation of Erios and Charmion”

Reading copy:

• “The Conversation of Erios and Charmion” — reading copy

Manuscripts and Authorized Printings:

• Text-01 — “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion” — 1839, no original manuscript or fragments are known to exist (but this version is presumably recorded in Text-02)
• Text-02 — “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion” — December 1839 — Burton’s — (Mabbott text A)
• Text-03 — “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion” — 1840 — TGA — (Mabbott text B)
• Text-04 — “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion” — 1842 — TGAPP (manuscript of title only) — (The title is listed in Poe’s handwritten table of contents, but the text itself no longer survives. It was presumably recorded, with perhaps a few additional changes made in proof, in Text-05.)
• Text-05 — “The Destruction of the World” — April 1, 1843 — Saturday Museum — (Mabbott text C)
• Text-06 — “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion” — 1845 — TALES — (Mabbott text D)  (This is Mabbott’s copy-text) (For Griswold’s 1850 reprinting of this text, see the entry below, under reprints.)

Reprints:

• “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion” — 1850 — WORKS — Griswold reprints Text-05  (Mabbott text E)
• “Tale of a Comet: The Earth Destroyed by a Comet” — Sept. 3, 1853 — Portland Transcript, excerpt from Poe’s tale, featuring the portion that begins “The elements of the strange orb . . .” and running to the end of the story. (The brief introductory note states: “Edgar A. Poe, in one of his imaginative dialogues give [[gives]] the following hints as to the possible results of the contact of a comet with our earth. A spirit in Aidenn, just from the scene of conflagration, relates to one long absent from the earth, the details of the terrible event.”)
• “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion” — April 19, 1857 — The Missouri Republican (presumably from the 1856 or 1857 reprint of Works) (The full story was printed on the front page of this newspaper.)
• “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion” — 1874 — Works of Edgar A. Poe, edited by J. H. Ingram, vol. 2, pp. 204-209 (This collection was subsequently reprinted in various forms)

Scholarly and Noteworthy Reprints:

• “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion” — 1894-1895 — The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 1: Tales, ed. G. E. Woodberry and E. C. Stedman, Chicago: Stone and Kimball (1:228-235)
• “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion” — 1902 — The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 4: Tales III, ed. J. A. Harrison, New York: T. Y. Crowell (4:1-8, and 4:275-277)
• “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion” — 1978 — The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 2: Tales & Sketches I, ed. T. O. Mabbott, Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2:451-462)
• “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion” — 1984 — Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry and Tales, Patrick F. Quinn (New York: Library of America), pp. 358-363

Instream Comparative Texts:

• None.

Plain Text Files for Juxta:

• None.

Miscellaneous Texts and Related Items:

• “Le Colloque d‘Eros et Charmion” — July 3, 1847 — La Démocratie Pacifique  (French translation signed “Isabelle Meunier”)
• “Conversation d‘Eiros avec Charmion” — (French translation by Charles Baudelaire)
• “Entretien d‘Eiros avec Charmion” — July 27, 1854 — Le Pays
• “Conversation d‘Eiros avec Charmion” — 1857 — Nouvelles histoires par Edgar Poe, Paris: Michel Lévy frères

• 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.
• Kock, Christian, “The Irony of Oxygen in Poe’s ‘Eiros and Charmion’,” Studies in Short Fiction (1985), 22:317-321.
• 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.
• Robinson, Douglas, “Poe’s Mini-Apoclypse: ‘The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion’,” Studies in Short Fiction (1982), 19:329-337.
• 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.
• 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.