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HEADNOTE

TEXTS

(A) Manuscript, April or May 1835 (now in the Pierpont Morgan Library; reproduced following p. 386).

(B) Southern Literary Messenger, June 1835, 1:565-580

(C) The Duane copy of B, with manuscript changes by Poe, 1839

(D) Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1840; published November 1839), 2:25-95 and 223-228.

(E) Rufus W. Griswold, ed., Works (New York: J. S. Redfield, 1850), 1:1-51. This is the copy-text, save for the “manuscript notes” on pp. 451-456.

EXPLICATION OF THE ABOVE

(A) This fair copy-text is written in Poe's extremely small, very neat script on ten leaves, paginated 1-20 by the author; the ninth and tenth leaves are now imperfect and a final one is missing. There are numerous errors in the spelling, which follows general British practice, and somewhat careless punctuation. For the provenance of the manuscript see Mary E. Phillips, Poe, 1:495. The title, given below, is followed by a poetic epigraph, heavily overscored, but which can dimly be read as the quatrain from the “Song” which was first printed in Griswold's edition, 1850:

(B) The magazine printing corrects spelling errors, improves the punctuation, and Americanizes the forms. The title appears thus:

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(C) This copy of B, once owned by William Duane (see A. H. Quinn, Poe, pp. 408-10), bears Poe's changes for the text of D, but does not include his long Appendix (see D).

(D) This is an enlarged and corrected form of B, with a long Appendix or “Note” (see note 80A to the text below). The footnote to the title is given as variant note 80 u, below. The title follows:

(E) The alterations in and numerous additions to D were probably made for the projected PHANTASY-PIECES between 1840-1842 (see Quinn, Poe, pp. 336-40, and Tales, 2:1398, along with the title page and Table of Contents illustrated, on facing pages, after p. 474). The 1850 edition is the first to use the title (given below) which is listed with the erroneous spelling in PHANTASY-PIECES of “The Unparralleled Adventure of one Hans Pfaall.” although it can not be verified since the marked second volume (of the Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque) containing the tale is missing. Griswold uses the new title of this copy and in his Table of Contents introduces a gratuitous “s” at the end of “adventure.” His capitalization, however, in “The Adventures of one Hans Pfaall,” serves, along with that in PHANTASY-PIECES, to indicate Poe's final preference. Paragraphs 90-91 could not antedate 1845 and indicate other changes made in the final version used by Griswold for E, the copy-text being probably destroyed by his staff. For the changes in Poe's spelling of the name of the chief character or of the title and in Poe's references in letters, textual notes, and journalistic notices, see my study in the Mississippi Quarterly, Fall 1978, 31:519-27. The title is as follows: