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MISCELLANEOUS SUBJECTS

ADVERTISEMENTS AND PUBLICITY NOTICES

Occasionally, Poe inserted advertising copy into his editorial columns to cultivate favor with advertisers (see 227/54 note) or as a favor to a friend (see reference to Watson's Glee Class, 264). In a sense, many of the short references to new book projects by Wiley and Putnam or the other publishers are an attempt to please real or potential advertisers. These notices are inserted only when they appear to be in Poe's words. The advertisements themselves did not seem to be diminishing in total number, Hull observes (p. 508), during Poe's sole editorship, and with the 9/27 issue the format was changed from two column to three column pages (with smaller print, of course). Yet much of the material was probably gratuitously inserted or paid for at reduced rates. On 11/1, the format reverted to two-column pages. It has been impossible to insert this material, even when Poe may have composed the copy, save for his own pseudonymous investment offer of a share in the BJ (see 220/29 n).

Another broad category included in my facsimile text relates to notices for and about the journal itself. These are sometimes Bisco's announcements of a change in the editorial personnel (see p. 160 [facsimile text]), office changes (as when the BJ moved next door to Thomas Dunn English, editor of the Aristidean, to save expenses [see P36/38n]), or lists of the designated agents for the magazine, with their communities indicated — at the end of the advertisement page (311). The last have not been reprinted, but sometimes excerpted names have been mentioned when relevant to Poe's main text (see TOM, 82/18n, for example).