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

Reading copy:

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

Manuscripts and Authorized Printings:

• Text-01 — “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion” — August of September 1839 (There are no known draft manuscripts or scratch notes reflecting the original effort of composition. It was presumably originally written for Burton's, although it was revised again before being printed there, and thus was probably composed about August or September of 1839.)
• Text-02 — “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion” — 1839
  • Text-02a — “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion” — 1839, no original manuscript or fragments are known to exist (but this version is presumably recorded in Text-02b. As was typical, the manuscript was probably destroyed in setting type for Text-02b.)
  • Text-02b — “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion” — 1840 (but issued about November 1839) — TGA — (Mabbott text B) (Although technically available about the same time as Text-03b, it is likely that this is the first text thas was set in type and thus the earliest version.)
  • Text-02c — “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion” — 1839 — (speculated copy of pages from TGA with minor changes marked by Poe in anticipation of the reprinting of the tale in Burton's. This copy has not survived, but is presumably recorded in Text-03b.)
  • Text-02d — “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion” — December 1839 — Burton's — (Mabbott text A)
• Text-03 — “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion” — 1842-1843
  • Text-03a — “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-03b.)
  • Text-03b — “The Destruction of the World” — April 1, 1843 — Saturday Museum — (Mabbott text C) (This version more closely resembles the formatting of BGM than of TGA, and may have been based on the same modified version of BGM as was originally prepared for the republication in TGA, possibly with a few additional changes marked. Some changes may have been made in proof as they were not carried forward into the 1845 TALES)
• Text-04 — “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion” — 1843-1845
  • Text-04a — “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion” — 1843-1845 — TGAPPB — (Speculated alternate copy of TGA with manuscript changes marked by Poe in anticipation of publication as TALES. It was presumably recorded in Text-04b.)
  • Text-04b — “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion” — 1845 — TALES — (Mabbott text D)  (This version was presumably based on the TGAPP text as it lacks several of the changes made for the Saturday Museum.) (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 — (Mabbott text E) (Griswold reprints the text from the stereotype plates of TALES and thus with no revisions.)
• “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” — May 8, 1855 — Chicago Tribune (Chicago, IL), vol. IX, no. 110, p. 2, cols 6-7 (noted as from the Acacia for February, with the additional title of “The End of the World” and the following introductory note: “The gifted and lamented Poe had unequalled power, in giving to the pessible [[possible]] the appearance of the actual. He had wonderful skill in gathering and arranging the details, and he omitted none of the probable, no matter how minute and apparently insignificant. It was this care in filling up the picture which gave it the appearance of truth and life, and it is even difficult to divest ourselves of the opinion of its reality. We tore the following from Burton's Magazine some years ago, as worthy of preservation.” Acacia was a monthly magazine published by the Freemasons in Natchez, Mississippi, beginning in 1855 and ending publication in 1856. It was edited by William P. Mellen.)
• “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)
• “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion” — 1888 — The Complete Poetical Works and Essays on Poetry of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. John H. Ingram, London and New York: Frederick Warne & Co. (pp. 140-146) (This tale is included as one of six “Prose Poems,” without further explanation.)

Scholarly and Noteworthy Reprints:

• “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion” — 1894-1895 — The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 1: Tales, eds. E. C. Stedman and G. E. Woodberry, 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 and Study Texts:

• “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion” — Comparative Text (TGA and BGM)
• “The Destruction of the World [The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion]” — Comparative Text (BGM and PSM)
• “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion” — Comparative Text (TGA and TALES)

Miscellaneous Texts and Related Items:

• “[The Conversation of Eros and Charmion]” — April 24, 1847 — El instructor peruanao — (Spanish article with summary and translation of passages in “Cuentos de Edgar A. Poe,” by an anonymous translator, published in Peru.) (noted in Translated Poe, p. 330, n. 10)
• “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

• Esplin, Emron and Margarida Vale de Cato, eds., Translated Poe, Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 2014.
• 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.