Edgar Allan Poe — “The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq”

Reading copy:

• “The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq” — reading copy

Manuscripts and Authorized Printings:

• Text-01 — “The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq” — 1844, no original manuscript or fragments are known to exist (but this version is presumably recorded in Text-02)
• Text-02 — “The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq” — December 1844 — Southern Literary Messenger — (Mabbott text A)
• Text-03 — “The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq” — early 1845 — (Speculated revised copy of the Southern Literary Messenger with manuscript changes made by Poe. This copy is lost, but the text is presumably recorded in Text-04)
• Text-04 — “The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq” — July 26, 1845 — Broadway Journal — (Mabbott text B) (For Griswold’s 1856 reprinting of this text, see the entry below, under reprints.)

Reprints:

• “The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq” — 1856 — WORKS — (Mabbott text C)  (This is Mabbott’s copy-text) (Although there are differences between this text and that of Text-04, they are so minor that they are more likely to be editorial or typographical than authorial.)
• “The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq” — 1867 — Prose Tales of Edgar Allan Poe, second series (New York: W. J. Widdleton), pp. 398-417 (This collection is extracted from the 1850-1856 edition of Poe’s Works. It was reprinted several times.)
• “The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq” — 1874 — Works of Edgar A. Poe, edited by J. H. Ingram (vol. II, pp. 439-459) (This collection was subsequently reprinted in various forms)

Scholarly and Noteworthy Reprints:

• “The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq” — 1894-1895 — The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 4: Tales, eds. E. C. Stedman and G. E. Woodberry, Chicago: Stone and Kimball (4:171-197) (This collection was subsequently reprinted in various forms)
• “The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq” — 1902 — The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 6: Tales V, ed. J. A. Harrison, New York: T. Y. Crowell (6:1-27, and 6:275-277)
• “The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq” — 1978 — The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 3: Tales & Sketches II, ed. T. O. Mabbott, Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (3:1126-1149)
• “The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq” — 1984 — Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry and Tales, Patrick F. Quinn (New York: Library of America), pp. 766-786

Instream Comparative and Study Texts:

• “The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq.” — Comparative Text (BJ and WORKS)

Miscellaneous Texts and Related Items:

• “Les débuts littéraires de Thingum Bob” — 1862 — Contes inedts d‘Edgar Poe, Paris: J. Hetzel  (French translation by William L. Hughes)
• “La vie littéraire de monsieur Thingum Bob” — 1950 — Histories grotesques et sérieuse par Edgar Poe, Paris: Classiques Garnier  (French translation by Léon Lemonnier)

• Engstrom, Alfred G., “Poe, Leconte de Lisle, and Tzara’s Formula for Poetry,” Modern Language Notes (June 1958), 73:434-436.
• 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.
• Pollin, Burton R., “Poe’s Dr. Ollapod,” American Literature (March 1970), 42:80-82.
• Pollin, Burton R., “Poe’s Literary Use of ‘Oppodeldoc’ and Other Patent Medicines,” Poe Studies (December 1971), 6:28.
• Roche, A. John, “Another Look at Poe’s Dr. Ollapod,” Poe Studies (June 1973), 6:28.
• Whipple, William, “Poe, Clark, and ‘Thingum Bob’,” American Literature (November 1957), 29:312-316.
• 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.