Text: Robert A. Law, “A Source for ‘Annabel Lee’,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology (Urbana, IL), vol. XXI, no. 4, October 1922, pp. 341-346

[page 341:]

A SOURCE FOR “ANNABEL LEE”

“Annabel Lee,” one of the most admired and widely known of Edgar Allan Poe's poems, was first published October 9,1849, two days after the poet's death.(1) Much has been written about the circumstances of its publication, particularly as to the rights of rival publishers, and also about supposed references in the poem to Poe's wife, Virginia Clemm, to Mrs. Whitman, and to others.(2) But although Mrs. Whitman was convinced that the poem was composed in response to her “Stanzas for Music,”(3) and Professor W. F. Melton has revealed a close analogue of the poem in Poe's prose tale of “Eleonora,”no real source of (4) “Annabel Lee” appears to have been found.

I.

In the Charleston Courier of December 4, 1807, over a year before Poe's birth, were printed these lines, together with the modest introduction: “Messrs. Editors, I will trouble you with an occasional trifle, if you can spare it a corner.”

THE MOURNER

For comparison let us quote in full the familiar lines of Poe:

ANNABEL LEE

Every reader will note the situation and theme of both poems: a solitary mourner lamenting his separation from the long lost wife of his youth; the similarity between the names of “my Anna” and “my Annabel”; the underlying cadence of both lyrics — a line of anapestic tetrameter, followed by aline of anapestic trimeter, with alternate lines riming; the closeness of the two refrains: “In a cot by the side of the sea,” and “In a kingdom by the sea;” and of the respective conclusions: “In a cot by the side of the sea,” and “In her tomb by the side of the sea.”On this evidence the case must rest, but in passing one(5) may remark on the ideas common to both poems of angels and heavenly regions, of envy, and of the dead body borne away. Such coincidences and so many are, to my mind, not to be explained by the law of chances.

But let me acknowledge that I am fully sensible of the marked contrast between the poems. “The Mourner” is only a fair example of American newspaper verse of the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, echoing the conventional sentiments and diction of decadent British classicism. Assuming, for the moment, Poe's indebtedness to be a fact, to him nevertheless must be credited all the romantic coloring of “Annabel Lee,” its bold figures, its rich melody, its emotional strain and climactic structure, and indeed the transformation of the buried nugget into fine gold. Certainly the poetic reputation of Poe will lose nothing if the charge of borrowing in this case be sustained. [page 344:]

II.

“The Mourner” was printed in the Courier, a daily newspaper of Charleston, South Carolina, on December 4, 1807. So far as my knowledge goes, it has not been reprinted, although it may easily have been copied or borrowed by some contemporary newspaper. “D. M. C.” was presumably a local versifier, the riddle of whose initials I am unable to solve. Then how(6) could his lines have fallen under the eye of Edgar Allan Poe? This question I will not presume to answer positively, but more than one explanation is possible. Poe was an editor during two or three periods of his career, is known to have kept something of the nature of a scrap-book, and to have at least taken hints from several American poets of distinctly minor rank.(7) Now “The Mourner” may have got into some Baltimore or Richmond paper of the time, where it was later noticed by Poe.

It is also possible that he saw it in an old file of the Courier, itself. If Poe had been a resident of Charleston, he would probably have found such a file accessible in three semi-public institutions. The particular file that I have used, now in the Little- field Southern History Collection of the University of Texas, was for more than a century in the possession of the Charleston Chamber of Commerce. Another file has been for possibly a still longer time in the Charleston Library, and a third in the library of the College of Charleston. Now in October, 1827,(8) a few months after Poe had issued his first volume of verse, and while he was enlisted in the United States Army, he became practically a resident of Charleston, for he was stationed at Fort Moultrie in Charleston harbor and remained there exactly one year.(9)

Granted the accessibility, why should Poe have cared to pore over twenty-year-old files of even so respectable and interesting [page 345:] a paper as the Courier? A recent critic, on the basis of the Ellis-Allan papers in the Library of Congress, argues that Poe was deeply interested in learning the details of his parents’ lives, and presents evidence for his interest in the fortunes of the company of actors to which both parents belonged. Then (10) on his first acquaintance with the city, Charleston must have impressed Poe as the place where his mother, Elizabeth Arnold, acted soon after her arrival in America, many times later, and in the last months of her life on April 28, 1811;and likewise (11) as the town where his father, David Poe, began his stage career in Placide's company during the season of 1803-4.The file of (12) the Courier during that winter contains such comments on the elder Poe's acting as these:

In The Tale of Mystery, “Poe performed the character of Stephana (sic) handsomely. He looked it well, and his dress did credit to the manager's taste.”(13)

In Richard the Third, “Young Poe, in the character of Tressel, did more to justify our hopes of him than he has done in any character since his return from Savannah.”(14)

In Much Ado About Nothing, “Young Poe being less than usual under the dominion of that timid modesty which so depresses his powers, acted Don Pedro so respectably as to animate the hopes we have entertained of his future progress.”(15)

As Freeman in George Barnwell, “Young Poe begins to emerge from the abyss of embarrassment in which natural diffidence from his first appearance till but two or three of his last per- formances had plunged him so deep as to deprive him of all power of exertion. But he must have not only courage but patience — slow rises the actor.”(16)

True all these notices are to be met in the Courier of 1804, while we are trying to find reason for Poe's conning over a volume of three years’ later date. But what diligent student of Poe's biography is sure that Poe's parents did not act in [page 346:] Charleston at some time during 1807? And it is a coincidence that on the very page of the Courier facing “The Mourner” is an advertisement of The Grandfather's Will, together with the “Grand Historical Pantomime of La Perouse,” to be played on the evening of December 4, 1807, by Placide's company. In the cast of characters appear the names of Placide, Mrs. Placide, and Turnbull, all fellow actors with David Poe in 1804, as the advertisements of that year show. All that we are trying to suggest is a curiosity on the part of the young poet, leading him to turn the pages of the paper for 1807.

My guess is that in some way like this the newpaper [[newspaper]] verses attracted the attention of Poe, who for one reason or another kept a copy of them, to be used many years later. But I cannot fail to see in the crude lines of “D. M. C.” the suggestion for one of the finest lyrics yet produced in American literature.

ROBERT ADGER LAW

The University of Texas

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 341:]

1 In the evening edition of The New York Tribune. See Campbell, The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (1917), p. 294. The original manuscript is reproduced in facsimile in Woodberry's Life of Edgar Allan Poe, revised edition (1909), vol. ii, facing p. 352. This MS. was submitted by Poe to John R. Thompson, editor of The Southern Literary Messenger, in September, 1849.

2 Such views are summarized concisely by Campbell, opus cit., p. 295.

3 These Byronic lines, also termed “Our Island of Dreams,” together with 8 Mrs. Whitman's liberal claims stated in her own language, may be found conveniently in Caroline Ticknor's Poe's Helen (1916), pp. 129-130.

4 South Atlantic Quarterly (1912), XI, 175 ff.4

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 343:]

5 I am not unmindful of the fact that certain texts of the poem make this 6 line read, “In her tomb by the sounding sea,” but, as Campbell observes, opus cit., p. 294, the text followed above “has an incontestable claim to finality.” That is the reading of Woodberry's facsimile of the MS. See note 1, above.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 344:]

6 He continued to send “occasional trifles” to the Courier, which printed 6 verses from him on December 23, 1807; February 5, 1808; April 7, 1808; and May 31,1808. On the last named date he was again singing of Anna.

7 Campbell, pp. lii, liii, mentions Chivers, Willis, T. B. Read, Mrs. Hale, H. B. Hirst, G. P. Morris, and S. W. Cone as American poets who may have influenced Poe.

8 On inquiry last summer my colleague. Mr. F. F. Covington, Jr., learned that both these libraries still possess the file for 1807.

9 Woodberry, Edgar Allan Poe, American Men of Letters (1913), p. 37.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 345:]

10 Whitty, J. H., Complete Poems of Poe (1917), pp. 195-197.10

11 Whitty, introd., p. xxi.11

12 Cf. Woodberry, Edgar Allan Poe, p. 6.12

13 Courier, February 4, 1804.13

14 Ibid., February 13, 1804.

15 Ibid., February 29,1804.

16 Ibid., March 10, 1804.