Fragments, Trifles and Lost Items

Please note that this list is far from complete.

Fragments:

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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).

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.

Title: American Parnassus
Status: Lost, or never completed
Argument: Variant title of Literary America (Poe to Evert A. Duyckinck, June 26, 1845.)

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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