LONDON: HENRY FROWDE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, AMEN CORNER, E.C. TORONTO: 25-27 RICHMOND STREET WEST PREFACE THOUGH POe was constantly reprinting and revising his poems, there is in most cases no difficulty about deciding upon the text which must be accepted as final. It has been observed that, except in one case, Poe never returned to an earlier reading, and we must therefore obviously accept, for such poems as occur therein, the latest edition published during his lifetime that of 1845. Of this volume, moreover, Messrs. Edmund Clarence Stedman and George Edward Woodberry, editors of the Works of Edgar Allen Poe in ten volumes, were fortunate enough to find a copy, recently bequeathed by James Lorimer Graham, Esq., to the Century Association,' which is enriched by marginal notes in Poe's handwriting 'for the purpose of being incorporated in later editions'. By the courtesy of Messrs. Duffield & Co., 'publishers of the Stedman-Woodberry edition, copyright 1894,' we have been enabled to incorporate this valuable material.1 The Raven and other Poems, by Edgar A. Poe, 1845, contained the bulk of its author's work in this kind, and has been here reprinted, with preface and dedication, precisely as issued, except for the poems revised An edition of this work was also issued in England by Messrs. Lawrence & Bullen, who have kindly confirmed Messrs. Duffield's permission. 194639 after the Lorimer Graham copy, which are marked by an asterisk in our list of contents. Presumably it represents all that Poe was most anxious to preserve; but posterity without doubt will 'ask for more', and an editor can feel no hesitation in including everything now discoverable. We have first, then, a few poems from the early volumes not reprinted in 1845. For Tamerlane and other Poems, 1827, we have, like all our predecessors, followed Mr. R. H. Shepherd's reprint (George Redway, 1884), noting his 'emendations' in the Notes. the text of '1829' and 1831 we have accepted the transcripts in Messrs. Duffield's edition of The Works, the original volumes not being in the British Museum. For Poems published after '1845' seem to me best printed from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, in two volumes, edited by R. W. Griswold, 1850. His text is almost identical with that of the magazines or papers in which they first appeared, and has the authority of one who, whatever his prejudices, had full access to the poet's manuscripts and was, apparently, a careful and experienced editor. His In reprinting from these volumes of 1827, 1845, and 1850, I have deliberately returned to Poe's own, somewhat erratic but clearly intentional, punctuation, and observed his frequent use of dashes and italics. own 'Notes' are given, as he printed them, with the poems themselves; and I have supplemented the main contents by a few complete copies of earlier versions, varying so extensively from the final texts as to be almost different poems. Many of them, in fact, were published, and have been reprinted, under different titles. |