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Edgar Allan Poe — “The Masque of the Red Death”






Texts and Variant Texts

Reading copy:
  • “The Masque of the Red Death” — reading copy — based on Text 00

Manuscripts and Authorized Printings:

  • "The Mask of the Red Death. A Fantasy." — 1842, no original manuscript or fragments are known to exist (but this version is presumably recorded in Text 02) — Text 01
  • "The Mask of the Red Death"  — 1842 — TGAPP (manuscript of title only) — Text 03 (The title 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. One obvious change is the spelling of "Mask," which may have been made on the text but never found its way back to the table of contents as the project was ultimately abandoned.)

Reprints:

  • "The Mask of the Red Death" — April 30, 1842 — Baltimore Saturday Visiter  (acknowledged from Text 02)
  • "The Mask of the Red Death" — June 4, 1842 — The Literary Souvenir (Lowell, MA)
  • "The Mask of the Red Death. A Fantasy" — July 1842 — The Iris and Literary Repository (Concord, NH; Lowell and Boston, MA) (pp. 113-116) (This reprint is noted in the1992 "The Poe Catalogue" of the 19th Century Bookshop, p. 53. It is not mentioned by H&C or Mabbott. An examination of the volume suggests that it is an unacknowledged reprint from Graham's, very likely through The Literary Souvenir. It is noted as "BY EDGAR A. POE." The only other Poe reference in The Iris is a brief comment, at the end of "Literary Notices," from the issue for August, 1842: "RUFUS W. GRISWOLD. — This gentleman, the well known author of "The Poets and Poetry of America," has recently become an associate editor of Graham's Magazine. He will undoubtedly prove a valuable acquisition to the corps editorial. One of the former editors, Edgar A. Poe, Esq., is not, at the present time connected with the publication." (p. 160, col. 2).)
  • "The Masque of the Red Death"  — 1850 — WORKS — Griswold reprints Text 04 (with some minor editorial corrections) (Mabbott text C)  (This is Mabbott's copytext)
  • “The Masque of the Red Death” — 1894-1895 —  The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 1: Tales, ed. G. E. Woodberry and E. C. Stedman, Chicago: Stone and Kimball (1:249-257)
  • "The Masque of the Red Death" — March 1897 — Peterson's Magazine
  • “The Masque of the Red Death” — 1902 — The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 4: Tales III, ed. J. A. Harrison, New York: T. Y. Crowell (4:250-258, and 4:319-320)
  • “The Masque of the Red Death” — 1978 — The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 2: Tales & Sketches I, ed. T. O. Mabbott, Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2:667-678)
 
Associated Material and Special versions:

  • “Le masque de la Mort Rouge” — (French translation by Charles Baudelaire)
    • “Le masque de la Mort Rouge” — February 22-23, 1855 — Le Pays
      • “Le masque de la Mort Rouge” — Part I  (February 22, 1855)
      • “Le masque de la Mort Rouge” — Part II  (February 23, 1855)
    • “Le masque de la Mort Rouge” — 1857 — Nouvelles histoires par Edgar Poe, Paris: Michel Lévy frères
  • "[The Masque of the Red Death]" — 1882 — Valda noveller (Stockholm)  (Swedish translation, noted by Anderson, p. 54)
  • "De Maskerade van den Rooden Dood" — 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)
  • "Kizil Ölümün Maskesi" — 1955 — Altin Böcek [Golden Beetle], Varlik edition, Istanbul (Turkish translation) (the small softbound book has 109 pages. It features "The Gold-Bug" but includes seven other tales.)
  • "The Masque of the Red Death" — September 1964 — Movie Classics (a comic-book tie-in, published by Dell, to the API movie)













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Bibliography:
  • Anderson, Carl L., Poe in Northlight: The Scandanavian Response to His Life and Work, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1973.
  • Arai, Toshikazu, "Edgar Allan Poe's View of Life and Death: Structural Analysis of 'The Masque of the Red Death," Kenkyu ronshu (Soai Women's College), 1995, 42:1-7
  • Benton, Richard P., " 'The Masque of the Red Death' -- The Primary Source," American Transcendental Quarterly, first quarter 1969, 1:12-13
  • Cary, Richard, " 'The Masque of the Red Death' Again," Nineteenth Century Fiction, June 1962, 17:76-78
  • Fussell, Edwin, Frontier: American Literature and the American West, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1965
  • Gerber, Gerald E., "Additional Sources for 'The Masque of the Red Death'," American Literature, 1965, 37:52-54
  • Gonzales, Joseph F., "A Scrim for Poe's Screams, " English Journal, 1964, 53:531-532.
  • 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.
  • Herndon, Jerry A., " 'The Masque of the Red Death': A Note on Hawthorne's Influence," Masques, Mysteries, and Mastodons: A Poe Miscellany, ed. Benjamin F. Fisher, Baltimore: Edgar Allan Poe Society, 2006, pp. 38-44
  • Holsapple, C. K., " 'The Masque of the Red Death' and 'I Promesi Sposi'," University of Texas Studies in English, 1938, 18:137-139.
  • 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.
  • Magnuson, M. Denise Schimp, "The Narrative 'Mask of the Red Death'," Masques, Mysteries, and Mastodons: A Poe Miscellany, ed. Benjamin F. Fisher, Baltimore: Edgar Allan Poe Society, 2006, pp. 31-37
  • Mohr, Franz K., "The Influence of Eichendorff's 'Ahnung und Gegenwart' on Poe's 'The Masque of the Red Death'," Modern Language Quarterly, March 1949, 10:3-15
  • Pollin, Burton R., "Notre Dame de Paris in Two of Poe's Tales," Revue des Langues Vivantes (Bruxelles), 1968, 34:354-365
  • Pollin, Burton R., "Poe's 'Shadow' as a Source of his 'The Masque of the Red Death," Studies in Short Fiction, Fall 1968, 6:104-107
  • Pollin, Burton R., "Victor Hugo and Poe," Revue de Litterature Comparee, Oct. - Dec. 1968, 42:494-519
  • Reece, James B., "New Light on Poe's 'The Masque of the Red Death," Modern Language Notes, February 1953, 68:114-115
  • Roppolo, Joseph, "Meaning and 'The Masque of the Red Death'," Tulane Studies in English, 1963, 13:59-69
  • Rosenblum, Joseph, " 'The Masque of the Red Death' as a Diddle," Masques, Mysteries, and Mastodons: A Poe Miscellany, ed. Benjamin F. Fisher, Baltimore: Edgar Allan Poe Society, 2006, pp. 24-30
  • Shillingsburg, Miriam J., The Apocalyptic Vision of "The Masque of the Red Death", Baltimore: Edgar Allan Poe Society, 2007
  • Solomont, Susan and Ritchie Darling, Four Stories by Poe, Norwich, VT: Green Knight Press, 1965
  • Vanderbilt, Kermit, "Art and Nature in 'The Masque of the Red Death'," Nineteenth Century Fiction, March 1968, 22:379-389
  • Weber, Jean-Paul, "Edgar Poe on the Theme of the Clock," La Nouvelle Revue Francais (August-September 1958), 68:301-311 and 69:498-508.
  • 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.





 
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