Text: John C. Miller, ed., “Entry 157: ‘The Bibliography of Edgar Poe,’ by John H. Ingram, July 29, 1876,” Poe's Helen Remembers (1979), pp. 442-448 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 442:]

157. “The Bibliography of Edgar Poe,” by John H. Ingram, London Athenaeum, July 29, 1876, pp. 145-46

HALF A CENTURY has not elapsed since the author of “The Raven” printed his first little volume of verse, and yet, not only it, but also two later editions or collections, have become so extremely rare that the most diligent bibliographers seek for them in vain. Even the fourth and latest collection of the poems of Edgar Poe issued during their author's lifetime, is becoming scarce. These early editions being so rare, and a large portion of their contents quite unknown, some account of them cannot fail to prove interesting. Like some other modern poets, Edgar Poe, in the later part of his short career, discarded a very large portion of his juvenile verse, and refined and abridged much of that which he retained. Doubtless, what has been lost in quantity has been regained in quality, nevertheless, it will not be an inglorious occupation for the student to gather up the few chips still left in the master's workshop.

Edgar Poe's first tiny tome, consisting of only forty pages, was printed in the author's natal city of Boston in 1827, but suppressed previous to publication. It bears upon its title-page: —

Having so recently given a full description of, and lengthy extracts from, this unknown volume (Belgravia Magazine, for June, 1876), many further particulars are no longer necessary; the coincidence may, however, be pointed out that the excerpt from Martial — “Nos haec novimus esse nihil,” — with which Poe's Preface concludes, was also that selected as a motto for the title-page of “Poems by Two Brothers,” published in the same year, and generally considered to be Tennyson's first publication. There are several palpable errata in Edgar Poe's first book, which was anything but an édition de luxe, so that, apart from private reasons, [page 443:] its author was justified in its suppression. The Preface is followed by “Tamerlane,” which occupies 17 pp., and is an almost entirely different poem to that now known by the same title; nothing less than the entire republication of the former could show all the variations between the two. The later draft being indented and better punctuated, is more pleasing to the eye, but the older version contains many passages fully equal in beauty to the best of its successor. A more connected story is afforded by the 1827 version of “Tamerlane” than by the later editions; in it the heroine is named as Ada, and the hero is styled Alexis, Tamerlane being deemed only a nom de guerre: eleven notes, suppressed in the later editions, accompany the poem. Following “Tamerlane” are nine “Fugitive Pieces”; five of these have never been reprinted until now; one other, somewhat revised, reappeared in the 1829 collection, whilst the remaining three are reprinted, nearly verbatim, in the present editions. Dreams are the chief theme of Poe's first volume, and in it first appeared, but with the following stanza (now omitted) prefixed, the little lyric entitled “A Dream”: —

Poe's first acknowledged collection, that of 1829, bears the following title-page: —

This volume was printed for private circulation. It contains only 66 pp. and many of those are merely extra leaves and bastard titles. The real contents include “Al Aaraaf,” substantially as now printed, and prefixed to it, but then unnamed, the sonnet now styled “To Science.” Dedicated to John Neal, follows the present version of “Tamerlane,” and, thereafter, several Miscellaneous Poems: these smaller pieces include the lines now known as “Romance,” but then called “Preface”; [page 444:] the song, “I saw thee on thy bridal day”; “The Lake,” from the suppressed volume of 1827; and six other pieces. Five of these latter are, save some trifling corrections, as still published, but in the following lines “To M———” appear three stanzas not yet reprinted; the whole poem, as it stands in the 1829 edition, reads thus: —

The title-page of the 1831 collection is: —

This volume contains 124 pp.; it is dedicated to the United States Corps of Cadets, and is prefaced by a letter to a “Mr. B———,” doubtless a mythical person. This letter, dated from West Point, Poe afterwards [page 445:] republished, with some slight alterations, as a magazine paper. The shorter poems lead the van, beginning with a poetical “Introduction” of sixty-six lines, an expansion of the twenty-one lines known as “Preface” in 1829. These additional lines were subsequently suppressed; but the following exerpt will show that they are worthy of preservation, not only as a fair sample of the idiosyncracies, but also of the poetic powers, of their author. After verse 10, the suppressed lines run: —

These lines are followed by the exquisite lyric, “To Helen”; by the earliest known version of “Israfel”; by “The Doomed City,” afterwards improved and rechristened “The, City in the Sea”; by a much expanded and weakened version of “Fairyland”; by “Irene,” subsequently much altered and abridged, and published as “The Sleeper”; by “A Paean,” chiefly remarkable as being the germ of that melodious and exultant defiance of Death, the poem of “Lenore”; and, finally, as far as the “Miscellaneous Poems” are concerned, by some lines entitled “The Valley Nis,” which lines ultimately, much curtailed and revised, were renamed “The Valley of Unrest.” This 1831 collection consists chiefly, however, of enlarged but scarcely improved versions of “Al Aaraaf” and “Tamerlane”; the variations, indeed, in this edition are inferior in poetic value to those in the earlier volumes, and the punctuation is neither so good nor so characteristic, and leads one to the conclusion that the little book was very hastily prepared for the press. Both the longer poems, upon republication, were again reduced to their original dimensions of 1829; from the suppressed portions the following lines, from the Prelude to “Al Aaraaf,” will be interesting: —

From 1831 to 1844, Poe scarcely wrote any poetry, although he occasionally revised and republished in periodicals much that had appeared in his juvenile volumes. Midway, however, in this poetically barren period, he published two of his finest, if not the finest of all his poems, “The Haunted Palace” and “The Conqueror Worm?’ This long interregnum of poetic silence was succeeded by a period of great brilliancy inaugurated in February, 1845, by the universally admired “Raven,” and only ending (at the poet's death) in October, 1849, with the posthumous publication of “Annabel Lee.” The furore created by “The Raven,” undoubtedly encouraged its author to return to poesy, and to publish, in November, 1845, his final but incomplete collection of poems, as, —

The little book, although it only contains 90 pp., holds much more matter than its still punier predecessors. It is most enthusiastically dedicated “to the noblest of her sex,” to Mrs. Browning (then Miss Barrett), and is heralded by the same Preface which introduces all the posthumous editions. “The Raven,” which takes the lead in the volume, is as now reprinted; in earlier publications there had been many variations and gradual changes, of which the most noteworthy is the alteration, at the end of the 11th stanza, from the original reading of, —

to its present masterly roll of melancholy music. Besides the poems, confessedly “Written in Youth,” the work contains several others: which, are [page 448:] but revisions of his juvenile labours; an amended draft of the “Coliseum,” for which a prize had been awarded him in 1833; scenes from his unpublished tragedy of “Politian,” written somewhat about the same period; the few pieces ‘which had had written during his married life, and the definitive republications of his two longer poems, “Al Aaraaf” and “Tamerlane.”

Of the incomplete collection of Edgar Poe's poems published upon his death, and of the innumerable native and foreign editions and translations published since, there is no need for me to now speak.