Text: Stuart and Susan Levine, “Abbreviations,” The Collected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe — EAP: Critical Theory (2009), p. 23 (This material is protected by copyright)

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Poe heavily revised the printed prospectus “sometime previous to August 20, 1840” (Quinn, Edgar Allan Poe, 308). Because there are a large number of changes for so brief a document, the most effective way to show Poe's alterations seemed to be to present one of the earlier printed versions for comparison and call the revised version our reading text. We transcribed the first version from the copy at the University of Texas — Austin. That copy was mailed to Charles W. Thomson (Poe spelled it “Thompson”) and includes a letter from Poe dated June 28 (1840). A surviving example copy of the revised brochure is in the collection of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. That copy, transcribed for us by Joseph Feeney, Poe had mailed to a Joseph B. Boyd of Cincinnati; the letter to Boyd is dated August 20, 1840. (The revised version does not include the subscription form at the foot of the printed text.) Pollin's essay “Poe's Iron Pen,” in Discoveries, describes sources of texts for the “Stylus” propectuses and the nature of those texts.