Edgar Allan Poe — “Fairyland”

Reading copy:

• “Fairyland” — reading copy

Manuscripts and Authorized Printings (full text):

• Text-01 — “[Heaven]” — 1829, no original manuscript or fragments are known to exist (but this version is presumably recorded in Text-02. Having had the poems set in type for ATMP, Poe appears to have sent the manuscripts for “Al Aaraaf,” “Tamerlane” “To” (“Should my early life seem”) and “Fairyland” to John Neal, who printed exerpts. Neal may have returned the manuscripts as portions of “Tamerlane” and “To” were retained by L. A. Wilmer. Poe subsequently sent the manuscript of “Fairyland” to N. P. Willis of the American Monthly, who says, with some relish, that he burned them, which may explain why it does not appear that it was among the manuscript collection in Wilmer's possession. Alternatively, Wilmer or his descendants may have had the manuscript but gave it away as an autograph, as appears to have happened with a few of the shorter poems. Unfortunately, if it did survive, there is no subsequent record of the “Fairland” manuscript. Being lost, it must be presumed that the text is reflected in Text-02. The manuscript has never been described, but based on the other suviving pages of the Wilmer collection, it was written on off-white sheets of paper, using dark brown ink and a careful script. The length of the poem indicates that it would have been written across a series of separate pages, with odd pages numbered in the upper right corner and even ones in the upper left corner. At this point, Poe had not yet adopted the style of printing in imitation of type, nor the practice of connecting pages by using wax to form a roll.)
• Text-02 — “Fairyland” — 1829 — ATMP — (Mabbott text C)
• Text-03 — “Fairy Land” — 1830-1831 — (speculated revision of the poem, in preparation for the publication of POEMS. There are a substantial number of changes to the poem, but they mostly include a new section at the beginning and a few lines at the end. Consequently, only these portions were probably written out as a new manuscript. As he did for other poems, it is likely that he created a revised draft by combining existing pages from the poem as it was printed in ATMP with additional bits of manuscript for substantially new material. This draft, as well as preparations for other poems that appeared in the new edition, probably resulted in Poe using up his own copy of ATMP, but since two copies of the printed text may have been required for “Tamerlane,” Poe would have been able to keep the extra pages from the second set. This draft has not survived, but is presumably recorded in Text-04. Additonal minor changes may have been made in proof. during the production of POEMS.)
• Text-04 — “Fairy Land” — 1831 — POEMS — (Mabbott text E)
• Text-05 — “Fairyland” — August 1839 — Burton's — (Mabbott text F) (for this printing, Poe reverted to the text as it appears in ATMP, for which he had presumably saves a set of pages for this poem. Poe reprinted five poems in the early issues of his association with Burton's, but only “Fairland” had appeared in the 1831 Poems.) (In a letter to P. P. Cooke, Poe mentions that he is sending copies of the July, August, and September 1839 issues of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, but in Cooke's reply it is clear that he is responding only to a number of the stories as printed in Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, of which Poe had sent Cooke an inscribed copy. He does not mention the three poems by Poe that appeared in this issue. There is no reason to suspect that any of these magazine copies contained manuscript revisions by Poe.)
• Text-06 — “Fairyland” — about September 1845 — manuscript revisions in ATMP-EH in prepartion for RAOP — (Mabbott text G)
• Text-07 — “Fairyland” — October 4, 1845 — Broadway Journal — (Mabbott text J) (printed from Text-06)
• Text-08 — “Fairy-Land” — 1845 — RAOP — (Mabbott text H — This is Mabbott's copy-text) (printed from Text-06, with an additional change in the title. No changes are marked in RAOP-JLG) (For Griswold's 1850 reprinting of this text, see the entry below, under reprints.)

Manuscripts and Authorized Printings (extracts):

• “[Heaven]” — September 1829 — of excerpts only, Yankee — (Mabbott text A)
• “[Untitled]” — November 1829 — of excerpts only, American Monthly — (Mabbott text B) (N. P. Willis was the editor of the magazine at the time, and he writes a long notice describing how he relishes burning manuscripts of bad poetry that have been submitted for consideration. Among these, he lists “some sickly rhymes on Fairy-Land” and quotes four lines from Poe's poem that make identification absolute. Both Killis Campbell and T. O. Mabbott state that Willis burned a manuscript of the poem, but with the publication of ATMP underway at the time, it is possible that Poe sent printed proof pages. This circumstance may partially explain Poe's long, early dismissal of Willis, modified as Poe developed a more direct connection with Willis, who remained a supporting force for Poe after the poet's death in 1849.)
• “Fairy-Land” — 1829 or 1830 — of excerpts only — (Mabbott text D)

Reprints:

• “[Fairy Land]” — about May 1830 — unidentified Baltimore newspaper  (reprint of a long excerpt, about the first half of the poem, from ATMP in a short review)
• “[Fairy Land]” — May 7, 1831 — New York Mirror  (reprint of excerpts from Poems in a short review)
• “Fairy-Land” — 1850 — WORKS — Griswold merely reprints Text-08  (Mabbott text K)
• “Fairyland” — 1875 — The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol 3: Poems and Essays, ed. J. H. Ingram, Edinburgh, Adam and Charles Black (3:86-87)

Scholarly and Noteworthy Reprints:

• “Fairy-Land” — 1894-1895 — The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 10: Poems, ed. E. C. Stedman and G. E. Woodberry, Chicago: Stone and Kimball (10:136-137, and pp. 234-236)
• “Fairy-Land” — 1902 — The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 7: Poems, ed. J. A. Harrison, New York: T. Y. Crowell (10:44-45, and 10:168-171)
• “Fairy-Land” — 1911 — The Complete Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. J. H. Whitty, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co. (pp. 132-133, and pp. 280-282)
• “Fairy-Land” — 1917 — The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. Killis Campbell, Boston: Ginn and Company (pp. 53-56, and pp. 197-199)
• “Fairy-Land” — 1965 — The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. Floyd Stovall, Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia (pp. 45-46, and pp. 208-211)  (In his notes, Stovall gives the full text of the 1831 “Fairy-Land.”)
• “Fairyland [I]” — 1969 — The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 1: Poems, ed. T. O. Mabbott, Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (1:138-142)
• “Fairyland [II]” — 1969 — The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 1: Poems, ed. T. O. Mabbott, Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (1:161-163) (Because the revisions are substantial, Mabbott printis this as a separate poem.)
• “Fairy Land” — 1984 — Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry and Tales, ed. Patrick F. Quinn (New York: Library of America) (pp. 57-59) (reprints Text-06)
• “Fairy-Land” — 1984 — Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry and Tales, ed. Patrick F. Quinn (New York: Library of America) (pp. 59-60) (reprints Text-10)

Instream Comparative and Study Texts:

• “Fairyland” — Study Text (ATMP-EH)

Miscellaneous Texts and Related Items:

• “La Pays des Fées” — dated 2009, but available in late 2008 — Poèmes d‘Edgar Allan Poe, Paris: Publibook (translation by Jean Hautepierre)

• 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.
• Mabbott, Thomas Ollive, ed., The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe (Vol 1 Poems), Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969.