Edgar Allan Poe — “The Imp of the Perverse”

Reading copy:

• “The Imp of the Perverse” — reading copy

Manuscripts and Authorized Printings:

• Text-01 — “The Imp of the Perverse” — 1845, no original manuscript or fragments are known to exist (but this version is presumably recorded in Text-02)
• Text-02 — “The Imp of the Perverse” — July 1845 — Graham’s — (Mabbott text A)
• “The Imp of the Perverse” — mid-late 1845 — revised manuscript, no longer surviving, but presumably reflected in Text-04. (The changes between Text-02 and Text-04 are so significant in both substance and number, that a new full manuscript is presumed.)
• Text-04 — “The Imp of the Perverse” — late 1845 — The May Flower for 1846 — (Mabbott text B)
• Text-05 — “The Imp of the Perverse” — 1850 — WORKS — (Mabbott text C)  (This is Mabbott’s copy-text)

Reprints:

• “The Imp of the Perverse” — 1867 — Prose Tales of Edgar Allan Poe, first series (New York: W. J. Widdleton), pp. 353-359 (This collection is extracted from the 1850-1856 edition of Poe’s Works. It was reprinted several times.)
• “The Imp of the Perverse” — 1874 — Works of Edgar A. Poe, edited by J. H. Ingram, vol. 1, pp. 266-272 (This collection was subsequently reprinted in various forms)

Scholarly and Noteworthy Reprints:

• “The Imp of the Perverse” — 1894-1895 — The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 2: Tales, ed. G. E. Woodberry and E. C. Stedman, Chicago: Stone and Kimball (2:33-41)
• “The Imp of the Perverse” — 1902 — The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 6: Tales V, ed. J. A. Harrison, New York: T. Y. Crowell (6:145-153, and 6:287-290)
• “The Imp of the Perverse” — 1978 — The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 3: Tales & Sketches II, ed. T. O. Mabbott, Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (3:1217-1227)
• “The Imp of the Perverse” — 1984 — Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry and Tales, Patrick F. Quinn (New York: Library of America), pp. 826-832

Instream Comparative Texts:

• None.

Plain Text Files for Juxta:

• None.

Miscellaneous Texts and Related Items:

• “Le démon de la perversité” (French translation by Charles Baudelaire)
• “Le démon de la perversité” — 1857 — Nouvelles histoires par Edgar Poe, Paris: Michel Lévy frères
• “Le démon de la perversité” — 1869 — Nouvelles histoires par Edgar Poe, Paris: Michel Lévy frères
• “The Imp of the Perverse” — 2007 — Audio book (unabridged), read by Chris Aruffo

• Brown, Arthur A., “Death and Telling in Poe’s ‘The Imp of the Perverse’,” Studies in Short Fiction, Spring 1994, 31:197-205.
• Brown, Arthur A., ‘A Man Who Dies’: Poe, James, Faulkner and the Narrative Function of Death, PhD disseration, University of California, Davis, 1995
• Cavell, Stanley, “Being Odd, Getting Even (Descarte, Emerson, Poe),” in The American Face of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. Shawn Rosenheim and Stephen Rachman, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1995, pp. 3-36
• Del Vecchio, Rosa Maria, “Into that Material Nihility”: Poe’s Criminal Persona as God-Peer, PhD disseration, Case Western University, 1994
• 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.
• Kanjo, Eugene R., “ ‘The Imp of the Perverse’: Poe’s Dark Comedy of Art and Death,” Poe Newsletter (October 1969), 2:41-44.
• 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.
• Spanier, Sandra Whipple, “ ‘Nests of Boxes‘: Form, Sense, and Style in Poe’s ‘The Imp of the Perverse’,” Studies in Short Fiction (1980), 17:307-316.
• 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.