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Edgar Allan Poe — “Mesmeric Revelation”






Texts and Variant Texts

Reading copy:
  • “Mesmeric Revelation” — reading copy — based on Text 00

Manuscripts and Authorized Printings:
  • "Mesmeric Revelation" — 1844, no original manuscript or fragments are known to exist (but this version is presumably recorded in Text 02) — Text 01
  • "Mesmeric Revelation" — August 18, 1844 — a corrected copy of Text 02, sent to J. R. Lowell, but now lost and not recorded — Text 04 (Poe hoped that Lowell would get a copy of the corrected tale printed in Brother Jonathan or the Boston Notion, but no such publication of the tale seems to have occurred. The changes Poe made were presumably incorporated or superceded by the version printed in Text 05.)
  • "Mesmeric Revelation" — 1849 — manuscript revision of one word in "Graham" copy of TALES — Text 06  (Mabbott text C)  (This is Mabbott's copytext)

Reprints:
  • "Mesmeric Revelation" — August 3, 1844 — The New World  (9:132-134) (The headnote reads: "We extract the following marvellous article from the 'Columbian Magazine' just published. Mr. Poe cannot, on so serious a subject, trifle with his readers: yet more extraordianry statements can hardly be conceived, We do believe in the facts of mesmerism, although we have not yet been able to arrive at any theory sufficient to explain them. Here, however, we are almost staggered. Of course, the narrative will be universally circulated; so we recommend it to the perusal of our readers and invite them to draw their own conclusions. -- [ED.")
  • "Mesmeric Revelation" — August 31, 1844 — Philadelphia Saturday Museum
  • "Mesmeric Revelation" — 1844 — Universalist Watchman and Christian Repository
    • "Mesmeric Revelation" - Part I (August 30, 1844)
    • "Mesmeric Revelation" - Part II (September 6, 1844)
  • "Mesmeric Revelation" — about December 1844 — Dollar Weekly (New York ?), no copy located) (Poe sent a copy of this reprint to George Bush on January 4, 1845, when he gives the name as "The Dollar Weekly." No copy of the story has been located.)
  • "Mesmeric Revelation" — March 26, 1845 — Yankee Blade (Waterville, ME) (noted by Ljungquist)
  • "Mesmeric Revelation" — May 14, 1845 — Regenerator (Fruit Hill, OH) (no copy located)
  • "Mesmeric Revelation" — May 31, 1845 — Western Luminary (no copy located)
  • "Mesmeric Revelation" — September 1845 — American Phrenological Journal
  • "Mesmeric Revelation" — October 4, 1845 — Star of Bethlehem
  • "The Last Conversation of a Somnambule" — November 29, 1845, text "AF" — unauthorized reprint in Popular Record of Modern Science (London))
  • "The Conversation of a Somnambule. Held just before Death with his Magnetiser Edgar A. Poe" — 1845 or 1846 — unauthorized reprint, as a separate, from the Popular Record of Modern Science, London: V. Torras, n.d.
  • "Mesmeric Revelation" — 1852 — Tales and Sketches: to which is added The Raven: A Poem, London, George Routledge & Co.
  • “Mesmeric Revelation” — 1894-1895 —  The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 2: Tales, ed. G. E. Woodberry and E. C. Stedman, Chicago: Stone and Kimball (2:308-321)
  • “Mesmeric Revelation” — 1902 — The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 5: Tales IV, ed. J. A. Harrison, New York: T. Y. Crowell (5:241-254, and 5:326)
  • "Mesmeric Revelation" — May 1926 — Amazing Stories, vol. 1, no. 2
  • “Mesmeric Revelation” — 1978 — The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 3: Tales & Sketches II, ed. T. O. Mabbott, Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (3:1024-1042)

Associated Material and Special versions:
  • "Révélation Magnétique" (French translation by Charles Baudelaire)
    • "Révélation Magnétique" — July 15, 1848 — La Liberté de Penser  (translated from the 1845 Tales, Text 05)
    • "Révélation Magnétique" — July 30, 1854 — Le Pays
    • "Révélation Magnétique" — 1856 — Histoires extraordinaires, Paris: Michel Lévy frères











See also "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar," to which the present story is closely related.








Bibliography:
  • Baudelaire, Charles, Baudelaire on Poe, translated and edited by Lois and Francis E. Hyslop, Pennsylvania: Bald Eagle Press, 1952 (includes Baudelaire's preface to "Mesmeric Revelation")
  • 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, 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.



 
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