Fragments, Trifles and Lost Miscellanea
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.
-
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:
-
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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