Edgar Allan Poe — “Never Bet the Devil Your Head”

Reading copy:

• “Never Bet the Devil Your Head” — reading copy

Manuscripts and Authorized Printings:

• Text-01 — “Never Bet Your Head, A Moral Tale” — 1841, no original manuscript or fragments are known to exist (but this version is presumably recorded in Text-02)
• Text-02 — “Never Bet Your Head, A Moral Tale” — September 1841 — Graham’s — (Mabbott text A)
• Text-03 — “Never Bet Your Head” — 1842 — TGAPP (manuscript of title only) — (The tale is listed in Poe’s handwritten table of contents, but the text itself no longer survives. It was probably a modified version of the printed text from Graham’s Magazine, and is presumably recorded, with perhaps a few additional changes made in proof, in Text-04)
• Text-04 — “Never Bet the Devil Your Head” — August 16, 1845 — Broadway Journal — (Mabbott text B)
• Text-05 — “Never Bet Your Head” — 1845-1849 — (Speculated copy of BJ with minor manuscript changes by Poe. This copy has not survived, but the text is presumably reflected in Text-06. The chief change is “In the same instant,” which is changed to “At the same instant,” agreeing with the earlier version of text-02, and thus inferred as authorial rather than editorial.)
• Text-06 — “Never Bet the Devil Your Head” — 1850 — WORKS — (Mabbott text C)  (This is Mabbott’s copy-text)

Reprints:

• “Never Bet Your Head” — September 4, 1841 — Brother Jonathan (vol. III, no. 10, whole number 113, p. 1, cols. 7-8) (Poe’s name is given as the author, but no source for the text is provided)
• “Never Bet Your Head” — September 7, 1841 — Jonathan’s Miscellany (vol. I, no. 9, p. 67, cols. 1-4) (reprinted from Brother Jonathan.)
• “Never Bet the Devil Your Head” — 1852 — Tales and Sketches: to which is added The Raven: A Poem, London, George Routledge & Co.
• “Never Bet the Devil Your Head” — 1867 — Prose Tales of Edgar Allan Poe, second series (New York: W. J. Widdleton), pp. 112-121 (This collection is extracted from the 1850-1856 edition of Poe’s Works. It was reprinted several times.)
• “Never Bet the Devil Your Head” — 1874 — Works of Edgar A. Poe, edited by J. H. Ingram (vol. II, pp. 324-334) (This collection was subsequently reprinted in various forms)

Scholarly and Noteworthy Reprints:

• “Never Bet the Devil Your Head” — 1894-1895 — The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 4: Tales, eds. E. C. Stedman and G. E. Woodberry, Chicago: Stone and Kimball (4:124-136) (This collection was subsequently reprinted in various forms)
• “Never Bet the Devil Your Head” — 1902 — The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 4: Tales III, ed. J. A. Harrison, New York: T. Y. Crowell (4:213-226, and 4:309-311)
• “Never Bet the Devil Your Head” — 1978 — The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 2: Tales & Sketches I, ed. T. O. Mabbott, Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2:621-634)
• “Never Bet the Devil Your Head” — 1984 — Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry and Tales, Patrick F. Quinn (New York: Library of America), pp. 458-467

Instream Comparative and Study Texts:

• None.

Miscellaneous Texts and Related Items:

• “Ne pariez jamais votre téte au diable” — 1882 — Contes Grotesques par Edgar Poe, Paris: Paul Ollendorff  (French translation by Émile Hennequin)
• “Ne pariez jamais votre téte au diable” — 1950 — Histories grotesques et sérieuse par Edgar Poe, Paris: Classiques Garnier  (French translation by Léon Lemonnier)
• “Never Bet the Devil Your Head” — July 28, 1957 — a radio show broadcast on The CBS Radio Workshop show, introduced as “dedicated to man’s imagination, the theater of the mind” and starring John Denner as Poe and Daws Butler as the young Toby. (Butler would become more famous as the voice of Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound and other Hanna-Barbera characters. This radio episode is available on CD as part of a 6-CD set of “Smithsonian Legendary Performers,” issued in 2004. As was often the case with dramatic presentations of Poe’s works, the story has been modified.)

• Glassheim, Eliot, “A Dogged Interpretation of ‘Never Bet the Devil Your Head’,” Poe Newsletter, October 1969, 2:44-45
• 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.
• Lynch, James J., “The Devil in the Writings of Irving, Hawthorne, and Poe,” New York Folklore Quarterly (Summer 1952), 8:111-113.
• 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.
• 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.