Edgar Allan Poe — “Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling”

Reading copy:

• “Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling” — reading copy

Manuscripts and Authorized Printings:

• Text-01 — “Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling” — 1837 — (There are no known draft manuscripts or scratch notes reflecting the original effort of composition.)
• Text-02 — “Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling” — 1837-1839 (Speculated faircopy manuscript prepared for publication.)
  • Text-02a — “Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling” — 1837, no original manuscript or fragments are known to exist (but this version was presumably recorded in Text-02b)
  • Text-02b — “Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling” — 1837-1839 — lost periodical — (Mabbott text A)  (Mabbott's supposition is not entirely persuasive, but essentially boils down to the observation that this would be the only tale to appear in Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque that did not previously enjoy printing in a periodical. Indeed, the “uncontroversial” nature of the tale, Mabbott argues, would have appealed to publishers at the time. He suggests, as a possibility, the Baltimore Saturday Visiter, for which no issues of 1837-1839 appear to have survived.)
• Text-03 — “Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling” — 1840 — TGA — (Mabbott text B) (If the earlier periodical printing can ever be discovered, and there are textual differences, an intermediary form would be implied. Without that earleir text, however, it cannot be assumed.)
• Text-04 — “Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling” — 1842-1845
  • Text-04a — “Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling” — 1842 — TGAPP (manuscript of title only) — (The tale is listed in Poe's handwritten table of contents, but the text itself no longer survives. It was recorded, with perhaps a few additional changes made in proof, in Text-04b.)
  • Text-04b — “Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling” — September 6, 1845 — Broadway Journal — (Mabbott text C) (For Griswold's 1850 reprinting of this text, see the entry below, under reprints.)

Reprints:

• “The Irish Gentleman and the Little Frenchman” — July 1840 — Bentley's Miscellany  (unacknowledged)
• “The Irish Gentleman and the Little Frenchman” — August 1, 1840 — Spirit of the Times (New York, NY) (unacknowledged, except as having been taken from Bentley's)
• “The Irish Gentleman and the Little Frenchman” — August 8, 1840 — Alexandria Gazette (Alexandria, DC), vol. 40, no. 177, p. 3, cols. 2-3 (unacknowledged, except as having been taken from Bentley's, and with a number of very obvious misprints) (Information for this entry was provided by Ton Fafianie to the Poe Society in an e-mail dated December 18, 2019)
• “Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling” — September 18, 1845 — Rutland Herald (Rutland, VT), vol. 51, no. 38, p. 1, cols. 1-3 (noted as from the Broadway Journal, but without Poe's name as author, perhaps since Poe had not signed it with his own name in the BJ.) (Information for this entry was provided by Ton Fafianie to the Poe Society in an e-mail dated August 3, 2019)
• “Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling” — September 23, 1845 — The Sun (New York, NY), p. 1, cols. 7-8 (noted as from the Broadway Journal)
• “Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling” — November 4, 1845 — Georgia Telegraph and Republic (Macon, GA), vol. II, no. 6, p. 1, cols. 2-4 (with Poe's pseudonym of “Littleton Barry,” as it appeared in the Broadway Journal)
• “Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling” — December 23, 1845 — Southern Recorder (Milledgeville, GA), vol. 26, no. 57, p. 1, cols. 6-7 (with Poe's pseudonym of “Littleton Barry,” as it appeared in the Broadway Journal)
• “Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling” — 1850 — WORKS — Griswold reprints Text-05  (Mabbott text D — This is Mabbott's copy-text)  (Although Mabbott states that this version contains “authorial” changes, they seem so minor that they may be considered editorial or typographical, particularly in regard to the use of dialect)
• “The Rivals” — August 8, 1856 — Pembrokeshire Herald and General Advertiser (Haverfordwest, Wales, UK), vol. 13, no. 652, p. 4, col. 5 (reprinted, acknowledged as from Bentley's Miscellany, but, as in that publication, without naming the author, and with the new title) (Information for this entry was provided by Ton Fafianie to the Poe Society in an e-mail dated December 16, 2019)
• “Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling” — 1867 — Prose Tales of Edgar Allan Poe, second series (New York: W. J. Widdleton), pp. 177-182 (This collection is extracted from the 1850-1856 edition of Poe's Works. It was reprinted several times.)
• “Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling” — 1874 — Works of Edgar A. Poe, edited by J. H. Ingram (vol. II, pp. 394-400) (This collection was subsequently reprinted in various forms)
• “Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling” — 1893 — The Encore Reciter; Humorous, Serious and Dramatic Selections, compiled and edited by F. E. Marshall Steele (London and New York: Frederick Warne and Co.), pp. 93-95 (noted at the end as by Edgar Allan Poe. Also includes four other tales by Poe.)

Scholarly and Noteworthy Reprints:

• “Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling” — 1894-1895 — The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 4: Tales, eds. E. C. Stedman and G. E. Woodberry, Chicago: Stone and Kimball (4:137-144) (This collection was subsequently reprinted in various forms)
• “Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling” — 1902 — The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 4: Tales III, ed. J. A. Harrison, New York: T. Y. Crowell (4:114-121, and 4:283-285)
• “Why the Little Frenchman Wars his Hand in a Sling” — 1973 — Edgar Allan Poe: The Other Side, ed. David Galloway (New York: Penguin Books), pp. 109-114 and p. 249 (annotations are minor)
• “Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling” — 1978 — The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 2: Tales & Sketches I, ed. T. O. Mabbott, Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (2:462-471)
• “Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling” — 1984 — Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry and Tales, Patrick F. Quinn (New York: Library of America), pp. 364-369
• “Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling” — 2015 — The Annotated Poe, ed. Kevin J. Hayes (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press), pp. 138-144

Instream Comparative and Study Texts:

• “Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling” — comparative text (TGA and Broadway Journal)
• “Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling” — comparative text (Broadway Journal and WORKS)
• “Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling” — comparative text (All)

Miscellaneous Texts and Related Items:

• “Pourquoi le petit Français porte la main en écharpe” — (French translation by Léon Lemonnier)
• “Pourquoi le petit Français porte la main en écharpe” — August 1926 — La grande Revue (Paris)
• “Pourquoi le petit Français porte la main en écharpe” — 1950 — Histories grotesques et sérieuse par Edgar Poe, Paris: Classiques Garnier

• Hayes, Kevin J., “Understanding ‘Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling’,” Edgar Allan Poe: Beyond Gothicism, ed. James M. Hutchisson, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2011, pp. 119-128.
• 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 (Vols 2-3 Tales and Sketches), Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1978.
• Wyllie, John Cooke, “A List of the Texts of Poe's Tales,” Humanistic Studies in Honor of John Calvin Metcalf, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1941, pp. 322-338.