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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In more than forty years of study, I have been indebted to a great many librarians and other scholars, as well as to booksellers and collectors, whose help on special points I have usually acknowledged in the appropriate notes. But a few people to whom I have been indebted in a more general way, during the early years, should be named here. Among librarians were Belle da Costa Greene of the Pierpont Morgan Library, Clarence Saunders Brigham of the American Antiquarian Society, Nelson Nichols and Harry N. Lydenberg of the New York Public Library (both pupils of the great bibliographer, Wilberforce Eames), and Alexander J. Wall of the New-York Historical Society, all of whom were my teachers in method. Among booksellers were Oscar Wegelin and Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach; among collectors Oliver Barrett of Chicago and William Koester of Baltimore. Among teachers should be mentioned my preceptor, William Peterfield Trent, and my friends and correspondents, George Saintsbury, George Edward Woodberry, and Killis Campbell.

In George N. Shuster I found a college president who understood the problem of a scholar engaged on a project that produced results only after long years. I should also like to express my appreciation to William S. Dix and the staff of the library of Princeton University for the warm hospitality accorded my work on the Poe edition during the summers of the last fifteen years; and to record a working scholar's sincere gratitude to Chancellor Harry Ransom and the University of Texas for their generosity in providing reproductions of manuscripts in the Koester Collection, acquired by them in 1966. I am grateful to H. Bradley Martin and Colonel Richard Gimbel for permission to use materials in their splendid collections, and for the general help and advice received from James Holly Hanford, the late John Gordan, and especially Kenneth Murdock and Floyd Stovall.

Patricia Edwards Clyne has not only typed the manuscripts [page viii:] but read the proof and helped in many generous ways. Finally I should like to thank Dr. George E. Hatvary who for the last three years has been my editorial assistant.

T. O. M.

St. John's University
May 1, 1968

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At the time of Mr. Mabbott's death on May 15, 1968, the present volume was all but finished. The printer's copy for the texts of the poems and for the accompanying apparatus had been read and approved by him. He had completed recent revisions of the preface and the introduction to the poems, of all the appendixes, and of the “Annals,” as he called his outline of Poe's biography and career as a writer. He had also corrected ninety-five galleys — more than half — of the proofs of the poems and commentary.

This edition of the poems has been seen through the press by Maureen C. Mabbott, who served as an assistant to her husband during the many years of his research, and by Eleanor D. Kewer, Chief Editor for Special Projects of the Harvard University Press. Both have been fully cognizant of Mr. Mabbott's methods of work, and their final efforts loyally and expertly carry out his wishes.

CLARENCE GOHDES
ROLLO G. SILVER
November 1968