Fragments, Trifles and Lost Items
Please note that this list is far from complete.
Fragments:
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Title: Living Writers of America
Status: Variant title of Literary America (Adverstised
as to be included in the first issue of The Stylus, Jan or Feb ?,
(certainly before April 15) 1848
Argument: Begun in 1846 (The Poe Log, p. 675). It was
apparently intended as an extension of his "Literati" series. Quinn notes
that Poe was working on the projected volume in 1846, 1847 and 1848 (Quinn,
Edgar Allan Poe, pp. 505-506.) Surviving manuscript reprinted with
extensive notes by Burton R. Pollin, "The Living Writers of America: A
Manuscript by Edgar Allan Poe," Studies in the American Renaissance,
1991, pp. 151-200.
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Title: The Literary America, Some Honest Opinion about our Autorial
Merits and Demerits with Occasional Words of Personality
Status: Accepted
Argument: Three of the variants published by Griswold in his
edition of "The Literai" (1850), including the slanderous "Thomas Dunn
Brown" article on Dr. Thomas Dunn English, may have been the only surviving
items from this collection. (T. D. English, Richard Adams Locke and Cristopher
Pearse Cranch (Quinn, pp. 560-562).(Surviving title page reprinted in Burton
R. Pollin, "The Living Writers of America: A Manuscript by Edgar Allan
Poe," Studies in the American Renaissance, 1991, pp. 156.)
Trifles:
-
Title: Prostpectus for The Penn Magazine (June 1840; August
1840; September 1840; January 1, 1841)
Status: Accepted
Argument: Poe sent a number of these in letters looking for
support. Poe's interest in establishing his own magazine, initially to
be called the Penn Magazine and later The Stylus, is too well-known to
require specific attribution.
-
Title: Prostpectus for The Stylus (March 1843; January 1848;
April 1848)
Status: Accepted
Argument: Poe sent a number of these in letters looking for
support.
-
Title: "[Obituary of Virginia Poe]" (New York Herald and
Tribune, Feb. 1, 1847)
Status: Possible
Argument: These few lines are quoted by T. O. Mabbott, "Annals,"
Poems, 1969, p. 562 note 11.
Lost Items:
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Title: "[Review of John L. Carey's Domestic Slavery]"
Argument: Poe wrote to J. E. Snodgrass on June 17, 1840 that
he had written ". . . at some length, a criticism upon it [Carey's book
on Slavery], in which I endeavored to do justice to the author, whose talents
I highly admire. But this critique, as well as some six or seven others,
were refused admittance into the Magazine by Mr. Burton, upon his recieving
my letter of resignation." (Ostrom, Letters, p, 138.) The other
critiques mentioned have not been identified. Terance Whalen discusses
this item, concluding that there is a "possibility that Poe never reviewed
Carey's book at all" (Edgar Allan Poe and the Masses, Princeton
University Press, 1999, p. 132.
-
Title: "[Review of the Pioneer" from the Saturday Museum]
Argument: A short notice appeared sometime around the middle
of January 1843. In discussing that item, Mabbott notes that he feels Poe
wrote a longer, and lost review (Notes and Queries, 1940). The shorter
review survives only from a reprinting in the Pioneer.
-
Title: "[Review of Susan Archer Tally's poems from the Southern
Literary Messenger]
Argument: Mrs. S. A. T. Weiss quotes Poe as saying "Do you know
how I spent most of this morning? In writing a critique of your poems to
be accompanied by a biographical sketch. I intend it to be one of my best,
and that it shall appear in the second number of the 'Stylus'" (Weiss,
"The Last Days of Edgar Allan Poe," Scribner's Monthly, March 1878,
p. 714). Mrs. Weiss later noted "I do not know what became of the review
of my poems which Mr. Poe in my last interview with him told me that he
was writing -- probably it was only a beginning, and as such valueless
after his death -- and so I missed being immortalized" (Weiss, "Reminiscences
of Edgar Allan Poe," The Independent, 1904, p. 446).
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Title: "[Review of Mrs. S. Anna Lewis's collection of poems Records
of the Heart]
Argument: Maria Clemm comments in a letter to H. B. Hirst (October
23, 1849) that Poe had intended to write another critique of Mrs. Lewis's
Records of the Heart, Phillips, Poe the Man, 1926, p. 1531.).
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Title: A Critical History of American Literature
Status: Lost, or never completed
Argument: Original title of Literary America (Poe to
Lowell, August 18, 1844). Whether or not Poe actually produced any of the
text may be disputed.
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Title: American Parnassus
Status: Lost, or never completed
Argument: Variant title of Literary America (Poe to Evert
A. Duyckinck, June 26, 1845.)
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Title: The Authors of America--in Prose and Verse
Status: Lost, or never completed
Argument: Variant title of Literary America (Home
Journal, March 20, 1847.)
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