Edgar Allan Poe — “King Pest”

Reading copy:

• “King Pest” — reading copy

Manuscripts and Authorized Printings:

• Text-01 — “King Pest the First. A Tale containing an Allegory” — 1835, no original manuscript or fragments are known to exist (but this version is presumably recorded in Text-02)
• Text-02 — “King Pest the First. A Tale containing an Allegory” — September 1835 — Southern Literary Messenger — (Mabbott text A)
• Text-03 — “King Pest the First. A Tale containing an Allegory” — 1838 — manuscript revisions in Duane copy of  Southern Literary Messenger — (Mabbott text B)
• Text-04 — “King Pest. A Tale containing an Allegory” — 1840 — TGA — (Mabbott text C)
• Text-05 — “King Pest” — 1842 — TGAPP — (Mabbott text D)  (This version is a modified form of Text-04)
• Text-06 — “King Pest. A Tale containing an Allegory” — October 18, 1845 — Broadway Journal — (Mabbott text E) (For Griswold’s 1850 reprinting of this text, see the entry below, under reprints.)

Reprints:

• “King Pest. A Tale containing an Allegory” — 1850 — WORKS — Griswold reprints Text-06 (Mabbott text F)  (This is Mabbott’s copy-text)  (Griswold corrects several typographical errors, and there is one minor verbal difference. Mabbott presumes that this is auctorial, but it might just as easily be a misreading by the typesetter as it repeats a word used earlier in the same sentence.)

Scholarly and Noteworthy Reprints:

• “King Pest” — 1894-1895 — The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 4: Tales, ed. G. E. Woodberry and E. C. Stedman, Chicago: Stone and Kimball (4:58-74) (This collection was subsequently reprinted in various forms)
• “King Pest” — 1902 — The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 2: Tales I, ed. J. A. Harrison, New York: T. Y. Crowell (2:168-184, and 2:367-370)
• “King Pest” — 1978 — The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 2: Tales & Sketches I, ed. T. O. Mabbott, Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2:238-255)

Instream Comparative Texts:

• “King Pest” — comparative text (TGAPP) (This comparative text shows the changes Poe made in manuscript in his own copy of Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in 1842, the intended new edition being called Phantasy Pieces.)

Plain Text Files for Juxta:

• None.

Miscellaneous Texts and Related Items:

• “Le roi peste” — (French translation by Charles Baudelaire)
  • “Le roi peste” — January 23-27, 1855 — Le Pays
    • “Le roi peste” — Part I  (January 23, 1855)
    • “Le roi peste” — Part II  (January 26, 1855)
    • “Le roi peste” — Part III  (January 27, 1855)
  • “Le roi peste” — 1857 — Nouvelles histoires par Edgar Poe, Paris: Michel Lévy frères

• Goldhurst, William, “Poe’s Multiple King Pest: A Source Study,” Tulane Studies in English (1972), 20:107-121.
• 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.
• Hudson, Ruth Leigh, “Poe and Disraeli,” American Literature (January 1937), 8:402-416.
• Lucas, Mary, “Poe’s Theatre: ‘King Pest’ and ‘Hop-Frog’,” Journal of the Short Story in English (1990), 14:25-40.
• 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.
• Whipple, William, “Poe’s Political Satire,” University of Texas Studies in English (1956), 35:81-95.
• 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.