Edgar Allan Poe — “The Business Man”

Reading copy:

• “The Business Man” — reading copy

Manuscripts and Authorized Printings:

• Text-01 — “Peter Pendulum, The Business Man” — late 1839 or very early 1840, no original manuscript or fragments are known to exist (but this version is presumably recorded in Text-02)
• Text-02 — “Peter Pendulum, The Business Man” — February 1840 — Burton’s — (Mabbott text A)
• Text-03 — “The Business Man” — 1842 — TGAPP (manuscript of title only) — (The tale is listed in Poe’s handwritten table of contents, but the text itself no longer survives. It was probably a modified version of the printed text from Burton’s, and is presumably recorded, with perhaps a few additional changes made in proof, in Text-04)
• Text-04 — “The Business Man” — about May 1843 — [T. O. Mabbott speculated, in his edition of the Tales & Sketches, 1978, p. 481, that there may be a version of the tale from the incomplete files of the Philadelphia Saturday Museum of 1843 or the New York Sunday Times of 1844. The appearance of the two reprints from 1843, which Dr. Mabbott did not see, suggest that he was correct in his suspicion that the substantially revised version of 1845 probably dated from an earlier, and now missing printing.] — (In the absence of this version, the reprints will have to suffice, for which see Providence Daily Journal and Manufacturers and Farmers and Providence and Pawtucket Advertiser below.)
• Text-05 — “The Business Man” — August 2, 1845 — Broadway Journal — (Mabbott text B) (For Griswold’s 1856 reprinting of this text, see the entry below, under reprints.)

Reprints:

• “The Business Man” — May 10, 1843 (presumably reprinted from Text-04) — Providence Daily Journal  (This text is reprinted by Reilly)
• “The Business Man” — May 11, 1843 (presumably reprinted from Providence Daily Journal as the type appears to be identical, including typographical errors, line breaks and spacing) — Manufacturers and Farmers and Providence and Pawtucket Advertiser)   (This text was reproduced, essentially as a photocopy, by Cameron)
• “The Business Man” — 1856 — WORKS — (Mabbott text C)  (This is Mabbott’s copy-text) (reprinted from Text-05, with changes that are so minor that they are very likely editorial or typographical rather than authorial.)
• “The Business Man” — March 6, 1861 — Spirit of Democracy (Woodsfield, OH) (vol XVII, no. 52, p. 1, cols. 1-4) (noted as by Edgar A. Poe)
• “The Business Man” — 1867 — Prose Tales of Edgar Allan Poe, second series (New York: W. J. Widdleton), pp. 489-498 (This collection is extracted from the 1850-1856 edition of Poe’s Works. It was reprinted several times.)
• “The Business Man” — 1874 — Works of Edgar A. Poe, edited by J. H. Ingram, vol. 2, pp. 560-569 (This collection was subsequently reprinted in various forms)

Scholarly and Noteworthy Reprints:

• “The Business Man” — 1894-1895 — The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 4: Tales, ed. G. E. Woodberry and E. C. Stedman, Chicago: Stone and Kimball (4:158-170) (This collection was subsequently reprinted in various forms)
• “The Business Man” — 1902 — The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 4: Tales III, ed. J. A. Harrison, New York: T. Y. Crowell (4:122-133, and 4:285-287)
• “Peter Pendulum (The Business Man)” — 1978 — The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 2: Tales & Sketches I, ed. T. O. Mabbott, Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2:480-493)
• “The Business Man” — 1984 — Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry and Tales, ed. Patrick F. Quinn (New York: Library of America), pp. 373-381

Instream Comparative and Study Texts:

• “The Business Man” — Comparative Text (BJ and WORKS)

Miscellaneous Texts and Related Items:

• “Un homme d‘affaires” — 1885 — Oeuvres Choisies d‘Edgar Pöe, Paris: A. Hennuyer  (French translation by William L. Hughes)
• “L‘homme d‘affaires” — 1887 — Edgar Poë: Derniers Contes, Paris: Albert Savine  (French translation by Félix Rabbe)
• ”L‘Homme d‘affaires” — 1950 — Histories grotesques et sérieuse par Edgar Poe, Paris: Classiques Garnier  (French translation by Léon Lemonnier)
• “The Business Man” — 2017 — Audio book (unabridged), read by Chris Aruffo

• Cameron, Kenneth, The New England Writers and the Press, Hartford: Transcendental Books, 1980, pp. 9-11 (reprints the text from Manufacturers and Farmers and Providence and Pawtucket Advertiser.
• 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.
• Lemay, J. A. Leo, Poe’s ‘The Business man’: Its Contexts and Satire of Franklin’s Autobiography,” Poe Studies (1982), 15:29-37.
• 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.
• Reilly, John E., “The ‘Missing’ Version of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Business Man’,” American Periodicals, IX, 1999, pp. 1-14.
• 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.