TEXTUAL NOTES FOR THE ' TALES OF EDGAR ALLAN POE VIRGINIA ,EDITION‘ VOLS. II TO‘VI'_, ‘11.; BY 55;:yl ROBERT A’. 3, s" 'EWART NEW YORK THOMAS Y. CROWELL w C0. PUBLISHERS ' . x h ,w... LL): “AA 1n,“ n,- \ GK. KManALl-QLMM if; “M, r... L.” \ f .. ‘ V X'va, :‘ 5L.- ‘ v A - k; I _ , x; ~ t ‘ ,r r _/ . Copvmcm, 1902 BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL AND COMPANY ‘NOTES. (297) m..._«_....m«. ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE NOTES. -mw..__.._..v.._ 0. — Omit. o. c.—Omit comma or commas. Mu“... o. h.—Omit hyphen. o. d.—Omit dash. o. q. m.—— Omit quotation marks. 0. a.—Omit aCCent. s. 1. — Small letter. cap. — Capital. i. —Italics. n. i.—Not italics. p.— Page. 1. — Line. The dates 1840, 1843, 1845, refer to the respective col- . lected editions. The first group of each body of notes gives the variations of the earliest collated form of the tale from the text of the edition, the reading of the text standing first, with the cor- responding reading of the collated form in parentheses. In order to economize space, the second, third, or fourth state was in most cases collated with the earliest forms, the read- ing of the later form being placed first in the notes, with the earliest form in parentheses. (:98) INTRODUCTKMJ TO THE NOTES THE works of few authors have been subjected by the authors themselves to such careful and repeated revision as were the Tales of Poe. The great majority of these tales were published in magazines, newspapers, or volumes at least twice, sometimes as many as four or five times, dur- ing Poe‘s lifetime; and on nearly every republication the Tales appeared in a revised form, the revision varying in extent from a few unimportant emendations to the careful reconstruction of almost every sentence. Poe never seemed fully content with any state of his work, correcting and emending with manuscript notes on the margin even the latest printed form as found in the edition of 134.5 and in the Broadway journal. The carelessness of editors and of printers of that period was a source of constant irritation to him, and he was ever fearful that the work which he had been at suchpains to IsnI‘anP umnlll kn knnnrlprl and ynnrilntnrl at tltPiI' lwnllc The words taken as the motto of this edition, “I am naturally anxious that what I have written should circulate as I wrote it, if it circulate at all," express clearly his intense solicitude for the preservation of the integrity of his work, and it is in the hope of fulfilling as nearly as possible this earnest desire that the present work on his text has been undertaken. Poe was unfortunate in having as the first editor of his collected works a man so entirely lacking in sympathy for him as was Griswold, and the result was an edition incom- plete in matter and very defective in typography. Up to (=99) 300 NOTES. the present time nearly every editor has been content to accept the Griswold text with all or most of its blunders, and at the same time to present new errors not found in the, original. In order to determine to what extent the best editions of recent years vary from the Griswold text, and when such variations are justifiable, a careful collation has been made of the Stedman Sc Woodberry, Stoddard, and Ingram texts with the Griswold, and the results, so far as regards the principal verbal deviations, set down in the Notes. The changes justified by the last form of a tale or by manuscript notes are indicated ; others are the result of error or unwarranted change by the editor under dis- cussion. The variations in punctuation are too numer- ous to catalogue; but it may be stated inl general terms that Stoddard follows Griswold closely,- Ingram varies chiefly through numerous omissions,- and Stedman S: V‘Voodberry have made extensive revisions throughout with a view to conforming to modern notions. The Stedman & Woodberry edition was the first (that is, if we disregard Ingram with his few corrections) to start on independent lines, and attempt to establish a trust- worthy text by reference to the original sources ; but the end has been but imperfectly accomplished. Some ofthe Broadway journal variant readings, together with the manuscript notes, and most of the Lorimer Graham man- uscript corrections, have been introduced, but Poe’s punc— tuation has been ignored even when a correction in such occurs in his own handwriting; capitals have been changed to small letters and small letters to capitals; italics have been disregarded in many cases; a “corrected form" has been substituted for the quotations as given by Poe; the spelling has been altered to conform to present-day “usage and taste " ; and with the exception of the edi- tion of 1 3.1.5 and the Broadway yaurnal, little use seems to have been made of other final forms, as very few of their variant readings appear in the text. The Stoddard edition is founded on Griswold, but TALES. 301 alters, omits, or inserts numerous words without the authority of the original issue or the manuscript notes of Poe. Some of the typographical errors of Griswold are corrected, but at the same time some of the worst blunders are retained. As hinted above, Ingram did not accept the text of Griswold absolutely, but made some few changes on the authority of the Broadway 701mm], and altered a foreign word here and there. \Vhatever improvement appears is offset by a number of verbal errors. In several instances unwarranted liberties have been taken with the text, as in the passage in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” where the editor attempts to improve the sense by re- modelling the sentence, and again the omission of two sentences in “ The Tell-tale Heart.” (See Notes.) The earlier Graham state of “The Oval Portrait," with alterations in spelling and punctuation, is published by Ingram in preference to the shortened form as it appeared later in the Broadway 7om-Iml, sanctioned by Poe. In the present edition the latest form of the tale printed in Poe's lifetime has been taken as the text, wherever this form was known and accessible, and this original issue has been followed as closely as possible, the only changes made being the insertion of manuscript notes of Poe, the correction of a few obvious errors on the authority of an earlier state of the tale, and the cor- rection by the Editor of foreign or technical words ; but in every case where the original text is changed, the fact is stated in the Notes. Under no circumstances has un- warranted liberty been taken with either spelling, punctu- ation, or verbiage, but the aim has been to preserve the text as nearly as possible as Poe wrote it. In the Notes, readings of the text variant from Griswold will be found with the Griswold form immediately following in parcn~ theses. In the case of a foreign or a technical word cor- rectcd by the Editor, the corrected form comes first enclosed in square brackets, with the incorrect Griswold form following in parentheses, as elsewhere. 302 NOTES. The Broadway ffazmml furnishes the text for forty-one of Poe's tales, and as most of these were printed under his own eye and supervision, we are to expect greater typographical accuracy here than elsewhere; and such we find to be the case. We have further the advantage of knowing that Poe must have been fairly well satisfied with the work, as the corrections made by him in manuscript in his own copy of the jam-7m! are confined to one verbal change and the correction of a few typographical errors. A few obvious errors, however, were overlooked by Poe, and these have been corrected in this edition on the authority of an earlier text. The Duyckinck edition of 1845 contains the latest form for eleven more of the Tales. Here, too, we have the final seal of authority in the revisions as found in the Lorimer Graham copy, formerly owned by Poe. These manuscript corrections are much more numerous than those found in the Broad-way 701mm], but are confined to “The Gold Bug," “A Descent into the Mael- strom," “ The Murders in the Rue Morgue,“ “The Mystery of Marie Rogét," “The Purloincd Letter," “The Man of the Crowd," and “Mesmeric Revela- tion,“ the last two, however, having only one slight cor- rection each. In “The Gold Bug ” the emendations are much more frequent than in any of the others, and some are quite important. All the manuscript corrections in “ A Descent into the Maelstr'o'm," as well as several in “The Gold Bug" and in “The Mystery of Marie Roget,” and nearly all the corrections in punctuation appear in this edition for the first time incorporated in a printed text. The above mentioned constitute the extent of known manuscript corrections in the Tales; elsewhere we have to accept the printed form as final. “ Thou art the Man,“ “ The Cask of Amontillado," and “Mellonta Tauta" follow the text as found in Godey's Lady's Book. “The Cask of Amontillado ” appears in a somewhat revised form in Griswold, but as TALES. V 303 we have no positive evidence that these changes were made by Poe, the Godey form was preferred for the text, the Griswold readings being placed in the Notes. “The Domain of Arnheim" and “The Angel of the Odd " follow the Columbian Magazine form.