Edgar Allan Poe — “Eureka”

Reading copy:

• “Eureka” — reading copy

Manuscripts and Authorized Printings:

• Text-01 — “The Universe” — written as a lecture before February 3, 1848, no original manuscript or fragments are known to exist (but this version is presumably slightly reworked and recorded in Text-02) — (Poe first delivered this lecture on February 3, 1848 at the lecture room of the Society Library, at the corner of Broadway and Leonard Streets in New York. In the printed text, a few traces of the lecture form remain, most notably the reference to “to-night” on page 29, which Poe marked for removal in Text-07.)
• Text-02 — Eureka, A Prose Poem: Or the Physical and Metaphysical Universe — presumed revision of the lecture in preparation for publication, completed by May 22, 1848. (The title is printed with the full subtitle in the advertisements of the book, and was probably removed only late in preparing the title page. No manuscript fragments are known to have survived, and the manuscript was probably destroyed during the process of typesetting. It is almost certainly reflected in Text-03.)
• Text-03 — Eureka: A Prose Poem — 1848 — Eureka — EUREKA-P
• Text-04 — Eureka: A Prose Poem — July 1848  — manuscript revisions in Mary Osborne copy of Eureka (Alderman Library, University of Virginia) — EUREKA-O (This copy is incribed by Poe to Mary Osborne, and contains 10 changes in Poe's hand. Because these changes are minor, they are noted in the appropriate sections under Text-03.)
• Text-05 — Eureka: A Prose Poem — September or October 1848  — manuscript revisions in Eureka (Sarah H. Whitman's copy, now in the Lilly Library, Indiana University) — EUREKA-W (This copy is incribed by Poe to Mrs. Whitman, and contains 5 changes in Poe's hand, and one minor note by Mrs. Whitman. Because these changes are minor, they are noted in the appropriate sections under Text-03.)
• Text-06 — Eureka: A Prose Poem — early 1849  — manuscript revisions in Eureka (The Nelson-Mabbott copy of Text-03, now in the University of Texas at Austin) — EUREKA-NM
• Text-07 — Eureka: A Prose Poem — summer 1849  — manuscript revisions in Poe's own copy of Eureka (The Poe-Griswold-Hurst-Wakeman copy of Text-03, now in a private collection) — EUREKA-HW

Reprints:

• “Eureka” — 1850 — WORKS — Text R1 (Griswold essentially reprints Text-03, ignoring the revisions in Text-07. Although Griswold did have Poe's annotated copy, it may have come into his hands after he had already had the material prepared by the typesetter.)
• “Eureka” — 1875 — The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. J. H. Ingram, Edinburgh, Adam and Charles Black (3:91-195)
• Eureka — 1991 — San Francisco: The Arion Press (with eight relief prints by Arakawa) (a limited edition of 250 copies, signed by the artist) (120 pages, 13-1/2 by 9-3/4 inches)

Scholarly and Noteworthy Reprints:

• “Eureka” — 1895 — The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 9: Eureka and Miscellanies, eds. E. C. Stedman and G. E. Woodberry, Chicago: Stone and Kimball (9:1-138, and 9:293-315) (This is the first published version to implement the numerous changes made by Poe in his own personal copy of Eureka)
• “Eureka” — 1902 — The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 16: Marginalia and Eureka, ed. J. A. Harrison, New York: T. Y. Crowell (16:179-354)
• “Eureka: A Prose Poem” — 1976 — The Science Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. Harold Beaver (New York: Penguin Books), pp. 205-309 and pp. 395-415 (reprinted 1977, 1978, 1979, and 1982)
• “Eureka: A Prose Poem” — 1984 — Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry and Tales, ed. Patrick F. Quinn (New York: Library of America), pp. 1257-1359
• Eureka — 2004 — Stuart and Susan F. Levine, eds., Chicago: University of Illinois Press

Instream Comparative and Study Texts:

• None

Miscellaneous Texts and Related Items:

• Eureka — (French translation by Charles Baudelaire)
  • Eureka — 1859 — Revue Internationale (Geneve and Paris)  (only 4 installments, incomplete, ending with p. 173 of the text as printed by Griswold in WORKS.)
    • Eureka — Part I — October 1859
    • Eureka — Part II — November 1859
    • Eureka — Part III — December 1859
    • Eureka — Part IV — January 1860
  • Eureka — 1864 — Paris: Michel Lévy frères  (issued about November 25, 1863)
• Eureka — 2007 — Audio book (unabridged), read by Chris Aruffo (part of a 5-CD set)

• Benton, Richard P., “Cross-lights on Poe;'s Eureka,” in Eureka: A Prose Poem by Edgar Allan Poe, ed. R. P. Benton, Hartford, Transcendental Books, 1973, pp. i-ii (reprinted in Poe as Literary Cosmologer: Studies on Eureka, a Symposium, ed. Richard P. Benton, Hartford: Transcendental Books, 1975, as a separate section)
• Bierly, Charles E., “Eureka and the Drama of the Self: A Study of the Relationship between Poe's Cosomology and His Fiction,” Doctoral Disseration, University of Washington, 1957  (abstract: Disseration Abstracts, 1958, 18:228-229)
• Bond, Frederick Drew, “Poe as an Evolutionist,” Popular Science Monthly, vol. LXXI September 1907, pp. 267-274
• Brooks, Curtis M., “The Cosmic God: Science and the Creative Imagination in Eureka,” American Transcendental Quarterly, 1975, 26:60-68  (reprinted in Poe as Literary Cosmologer: Studies on Eureka, a Symposium, ed. Richard P. Benton, Hartford: Transcendental Books, 1975, pp. 60-68)
• Browne, William Hand, “Poe's Eureka and Some Recent Scientific Speculations,” New Eclectic Magazine, 1869, 5:190-199
• Cantalupo, Barbara, “Eureka: Poe's Novel Universe,” in A Companion to Poe Studies, ed. Eric W. Carlson, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996, pp. 323-344
• Cantalupo, Barbara, “ ‘Of or Pertaining to a  Higher Power’: Involution in Eureka,” American Transcendental Quarterly, June 1990, 4:81-90
• Cappi, Alberto, “Edgar Allan Poe's Physical Cosomology,” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astonomical Society, 1994, 35:177-192
• Cappi, Alberto, “Le intuizioni cosmologiche di Edgar Allan Poe,” L‘astronomia, 1997, 176:26
• Conner, Frederick William, “Poe & John Nichol: Notes on a Source of Eureka,” in All These to Teach: Essays in Honor of C. A. Robertson, ed. Robert A. Bryan, et al., Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1949, pp. 190-208
• Conner, Frederick William, “Poe's Eureka: The Problem of Mechanics,” in Cosmic Optimism: A Study of the Interpretation of Evolution by American Poets from Emerson to Robinson, Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1949, pp. 67-91
• Cutler, S. P., “Poe's Eureka Reconsidered,” New Eclectic Magazine, 1869, 5:533-538
• Davidson, Edward H., “Eureka,” Poe: A Critical Study, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958, pp. 223-253
• Dayan, Joan, “Eureka: ‘A New World of Philosophy,” Fables of the Mind: An Inquiry into Poe's Fiction, New York: Oxford University Press, 1987, pp. 19-79
• Drake, William, “The Logic of Survival: Eureka in relation to Poe's Other Works,” in Poe as Literary Cosmologer: Studies on Eureka, a Symposium, ed. Richard P. Benton, Hartford: Transcendental Books, 1975, pp. 15-22
• Dubois, Réne, Edgar A. Poe et le bouddhisme, Paris: Editions Messene, 1997
• Ducreu-Petit, Maryse, Edgar Allan Poe; ou, Le livre des bords, Lille, France: Presses Universiaires de Lille, 1995.
• Ferris, T., “Minds and Matter,” New Yorker, May 15, 1995, pp. 46-50
• Fox, Hugh B., “Poe and Cosmology: The God-Universe Relationship ina Romantic Context,” Doctoral Disseration, University of Illinois, 1958 (abstract: Disserations Abstracts, 1958, 19:138)
• Gaillard, Dawson, “Poe's Eureka: The Triumph of the Word,” in Poe as Literary Cosmologer: Studies on Eureka, a Symposium, ed. Richard P. Benton, Hartford: Transcendental Books, 1975, pp. 42-46
• Gallatin, G., “Poetic Bang,” New Scientist, September 1996, 7:50
• Golding, Alan, “Reductive and Expansive Language: Semantic Strategies in Eureka,” Poe Studies, June 1978, 11:1-5
• Halliburton, David, “The Dialogues and Eureka,” Edgar Allan Poe: A Phenomenological View, Princeton: 1973, pp. 377-412
• Halline, Allan G., “Moral and Religious Concepts in Poe,” Bucknell University Studies, January 1951, 2:126-150
• 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.
• Hoagland, Clayton, “The Universe of Eureka: A Comparison of the Theories of Eddington and Poe,” Southern Literary Messenger, May 1939, 1:307-313
• Hoberg, Perry F., “Poe: Trickster-Cosmologist,” in Poe as Literary Cosmologer: Studies on Eureka, a Symposium, ed. Richard P. Benton, Hartford: Transcendental Books, 1975, pp. 30-37
• Hoffman, Daniel, “The Mind of God, or, ‘What I Here Propound is True,” Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe, Garden City: 1972, pp. 278-299
• Holman, Harriet, “Hog, Bacon, Ram, and Other 'savans’ in Eureka: Notes Toward Decoding Poe's Encyclopedic Satire,” Poe Newsletter, 1969, 2:49-55
• Holman, Harriet, “Splitting Poe's ‘Epicurean Atoms’: Further Speculations on the Literary Satire of Eureka,” Poe Studies, 1972, 5:33-37
• Hume, Beverly A., “Poe's Mad Narrator in Eureka,” Essays in Arts and Sciences, 1993, 22:51-65
• Hussey, John P., “Narrative Voice and Classical Rhetoric in Eureka,” in Poe as Literary Cosmologer: Studies on Eureka, a Symposium, ed. Richard P. Benton, Hartford: Transcendental Books, 1975, pp. 37-42
• Jacobs, Robert D., “The Plot of God,” Poe, Journalist and Critic, Baton Rouge: 1969, pp. 402-426
• Ketterer, David, “Empedocles in Eureka: Addenda,” Poe Studies, December 1985, 18:24-25
• Ketterer, David “Protective Irony and ‘The Full Design’ of Eureka,” in Poe as Literary Cosmologer: Studies on Eureka, a Symposium, ed. Richard P. Benton, Hartford: Transcendental Books, 1975, pp. 46-55
• Levine, Stuart and Susan F., eds., Eureka, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004  (Poe's text, edited and with an introduction, notes and textual variants)
• 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.
• Maddison, Carol H., “Poe's Eureka,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Autumn 1960, 2:350-367
• Manning, Susan, “ ‘The plots of God are perfect’: Poe's Eureka and American Creative Nihilism,” Journal of American Studies, 1989, 23:235-251
• Mazow, Julia A., “The Undivided Consciousness of the Narrator in Eureka,” in Poe as Literary Cosmologer: Studies on Eureka, a Symposium, ed. Richard P. Benton, Hartford: Transcendental Books, 1975, pp. 55-59
• McCarthy, Kevin C., “Unity and Personal Identity in Eureka,” in Poe as Literary Cosmologer: Studies on Eureka, a Symposium, ed. Richard P. Benton, Hartford: Transcendental Books, 1975, pp. 22-26
• McCaslin, Susan, “Poe's Cosmogonic Poem,” Salzburg Studies in English Literature, 1981, 87:3-45
• Miecznikowski, Cynthia, “End(ings) and Mean(ings) in Pym and Eureka,” Studies in Short Fiction, Winter 1990, 27:55-64
• Nelson, Roland W., “Apparatus for a Definitive Edition of Poe's Eureka,” Studies in the American Renaissance 1978, ed., Joel Myerson, Boston: Twayne, 1978, pp. 161-205
• Nordstedt, George, “Poe and Einstein,” Open Court, March 1930, 44:173-180
• Osowski, Judith Marie, “Structure and Metastructure in the Universe of Edgar Allan Poe: An Approach to Eureka, Selected Tales, and the Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym,” Doctoral Disseration, Washington State University, 1972 (abstract: Disseration Abstracts, 1973, 33:3598-A)
• Pitcher, Edward, “Poe's Eureka as a Prose Poem,” American Transcendental Quarterly, 1976, 29:61-71
• Pollin, Burton R., “Contemporary Reviews of Eureka: A Checklist,” in Poe as Literary Cosmologer: Studies on Eureka, a Symposium, ed. Richard P. Benton, Hartford: Transcendental Books, 1975, pp. 26-15
• Quinn, Patrick F., “Poe's Eureka and Emerson's Nature,” Emerson Society Quarterly, 2nd quarter 1963, pp. 4-7
• Ramakrishna, D. “Poe's Eureka and Hindu Philosophy,” Emerson Society Quarterly, 2nd quarter 1967, pp. 28-32
• Rans, Geoffrey, “Poe's Eureka: The Macrocosmic Analogue,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 1971, 29:353-365
• Scheick, William, “An Intrinsic Luminosity: Poe's Use of Platonic and Newtonian Optics,” Southern Literary Journal, Spring 1992, 24:90-105
• Smithline, Arnold, “Eureka: Poe as Transcendentalist,” Emerson Society Quarterly, 2nd quarter 1965, pp. 25-38
• St. Armand, Barton Levi, “ ‘Seemingly Intuitive Leaps’: Belief and Unbelief in Eureka,” in Poe as Literary Cosmologer: Studies on Eureka, a Symposium, ed. Richard P. Benton, Hartford: Transcendental Books, 1975, pp. 4-15
• Tate, Allen, “The Angelic Imagination: Poe as God,” The Forlorn Demon: Didactic and Critical Essays, Chicago: 1953, pp. 56-78
• Thompson, G. Richard, “Romantic Skepticism, parts IV-V [Eureka],” Poe's Fiction: Romantic Irony in the Gothic Tales, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1973, pp. 187-195
• Umawatari, Nobuaki, “On Eureka,” in Maekawa wa Shynichi Kyoju Kanreki Kinen-ronbunshu, Tokyo, 1968
• Valéry, Paul, “On Poe's ‘Eureka’,” Variety, translated by Malcom Cowley, New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1927, pp. 123-146  (reprinted in The Recognition of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. E. Carlson, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1966, pp. 102-110)
• Van Nostrand, “The Theories of Adam and Eve,” Everyman His Own Poet: American Romantic Gospels, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968, pp. 204-227
• Vines, Lois Davis, “On Poe's Eureka,” Valéry and Poe: A Literary Legacy, New York: New York University Press, 1992, pp. 157-177
• Virtanen, Reino, “The Irradiations of Eureka: Valéry's Reflections on Poe's Cosomology,” Tennessee Studies in Literature, 1962, 7:17-25
• Virtanen Reino, “Poe's Eureka in France from Baudelaire to Valéry,” Kentucky Romance Quarterly, 1982, 29:223-234
• Wallace, Alfred, Edgar Allan Poe: A Series of Seventeen Letters Concerning Poe's Scientific Erudition in Eureka and His Authorship of “Leonanine,” New York: Union Square Bookshop,1930  (As it turns out, Poe was not the author of “Leonaine,” a hoax perpetrated by James Whitcomb Riley)
• Welch, Susan, “The Value of Analogical Evidence: Poe's Eureka in the Context of a Scientific Debate,” Modern Language Studies, 1991, 21:3-15
• Williams, Michael, “Eureka: ‘fondle the phantom of the idea’,” A World of Words, Durham: Duke University Press, 1988, pp. 146-151