[page xv, continued:]

MARGINALIA

In the United States Gazette and Democratic Review of November 1844, volume XV, pages 484-94, Poe published the first of the seventeen installments of the Marginalia, a word that he invented for this collection of observations and brief essays (see Marginalia Intro., note e, para. 2). The Democratic Review, a monthly, was founded in 1837, in Washington, by John Louis O’Sullivan (1813-85) and Samuel Daly Langtree (ca. 1811-42) but was soon transferred to New York City. It had a varied roster of first-rate authors, including Hawthorne and Bryant, and had achieved eminent status as a literary and miscellaneous magazine by the 1840s.(18) Poe invariably spoke in laudatory terms of its articles and proudly alluded to its publishing four of his Marginalia installments, in 1844 and 1846(19) (and “The Power of Words” in the 6/45 issue). The continuity perhaps proved his statements in a letter of 1849 about the popularity of the Marginalia series,(20) for the leading journals in America published the other installments of the Marginalia: Godey's, Graham's and the Southern Literary Messenger, although the rates per page seem terribly meager to us today.(21) Unquestionably these installments represented to Poe a means of providing sustenance for his penurious household, and they took shape as a “farrago” (Poe's word in the Intro.) of remembered bons mots, puns, excerpts from his past reviews, and new observations on matters of literature, social events, personalities, psychology, and the arts in general. Many might be shown to contain the germ of his own creative efforts and sometimes those of his readers, such as Baudelaire and Valéry.

The topics furnished below as a kind of secondary table of contents for all the Marginalia and Fifty Suggestions (see the end of this Introduction) suggest the great variety and scope of the 291 “articles” in the [page xvi:] 17 installments (plus the 75 of the other two sections). The allure of the “form” of the Marginalia for Poe must have been the “abandonnement” as he terms it (Intro., para. 4; also M 192), or the relaxed ease of the short discursive essay, so different from the neat and predetermined construction that he had always demanded for the tale and the poem. Apropos of his claim of accumulating a series of casual or stray “notes” detached from his books (see Marginalia Intro., notes e-f), John Robertson, an indefatigable book collector, was the first to deny the account of these “marginal inscriptions,” having found none extant.(22) We may perceive an extemporized quality in many of them that argues at times a hasty gathering of odds and ends to fulfill a commitment to the magazine editors. Yet Poe had a latent respect for compilations of miscellanea, as is seen in references to various sources of the Brevities: the books by Bielfeld, Jacob Bryant, Isaac Disraeli, Dominique Bouhours, and others not cited but praised — by Rochefoucauld, Colton, and Burdon (see Pin 1-2). Indeed, in view of their popularity we can understand Poe's frequent cross references to particular articles in the Marginalia, his republication of the Introduction of 1844 before Installment XIII, in 5/1849, and the clear evidence of his hope for book publication of all those printed in journals in the series plus new ones left in manuscript at his death (10/7/49) and eventually dispersed. In fact, there survive three installments of Marginalia from the Democratic Review (I, VI, VII) in the Johns Hopkins Library, with numerous autograph changes in the margins, inscribed before 1847 in ink and in 1849 in pencil (see M 38d, and the “Supplementary Marginalia” Intro. below). Oddly, these, probably mislaid, never found their way into the residue of papers left to his executor for posthumous editions.

The changes that Poe inscribed are quite outside the canon of his printed papers, but the substantive variants are recorded in the section under that general head in my Introduction, along with a number of highly significant changes definitely Introduced by Poe into other Marginalia entries printed by Griswold in 1850. The picture is clear — that Poe edited many of his installments — probably through XVI of 7/1849, no. 278, since that contains the last major change made by Poe. He was greatly troubled and harried by the anomalous Richmond situation and the links with those back North, so that his revisions were minimal in number. Doubtless he always intended to publish a book of Brevities, including at least the Marginalia, new additions (Supplementary Marginalia), and the Fifty Suggestions. At least, theoretically it could become a “book” within the “collected works,” such as the Redfield edition.

Moreover, Poe seems to have left several installments of the Marginalia in the hands of the editor of the Southern Literary Messenger, John [page xvii:] R. Thompson, for continuing the five-part series of 1849. After his death Thompson apparently gave portions of the manuscript away as autographs.(23) The Henry Huntington Library has acquired several of these fragments, most of which repeat ideas and comments on persons in Poe's earlier criticism. Only one, a detailed 1500-word analysis of Eugene Sue's method in The Wandering Jew, demands study and printing.

For the most part Poe publicly alluded to the Marginalia with a touch of pride, as in his review of Bryant's poems in the 4/46 Godey's (H 13.131), his 3/22/45 Broadway Journal allusion to the 1/244 Marginalia (H 12.74), the 4/46 Godey's reference (H 13.131), and that in the 6/46 “Literati” sketch of L. Osborn (H 15.48). His letters too show this feeling: the one to Griswold of 2/24/45 about his sending a portion of the Marginalia with “pointed messages” for citing in a new anthology (Letters, 279), or his hyperbole about the pay per page sent to P. P. Cooke on 4/ 16/46 (Letters, 314). A letter to John L. [[R.]] Thompson (cited in para.1) shows Poe's need to continue the series in 1849 and specifies the nature, scope, and important characteristics of the “genre.” In the original “prefatory remarks” — to be republished “you may perceive the general design which I think well adapted to the purposes of such a Magazine as yours:affording great scope for variety of critical or other comment. ... I propose ... 5 pages each month ... [at] $2 per page.” Finally, he will invite topics suggested by the editor, especially those “affecting the interests of Southern Letters” as neglected or misrepresented by the North (Letters, 415-16). This is far from the free, casual, abandoned tone of “marginal slips” bearing comments on a text, but in practice the last five installments only occasionally sounded the note of “pride in Southern letters” and resorted to the obviously desperate measure of borrowing numerous items of wit and wisdom from H. B. Wallace's writings (see “Sources” below, the last author cited in the list).(24) It was, incidentally, Wallace, Griswold's close friend in Philadelphia, whose Marginalia entries Griswold perhaps took the liberty of pruning away from the Marginalia printed in the 1850, posthumous edition, as he affirmed in his prefatory “Memoir” (see below).

The chronology of the transmission of the “pure” text of the whole of the Marginalia is a bit confusing since the 1850 edition furnished only [page xviii:] 201 out of the 291 articles of the separate seventeen installments. These alone were known to the public of Europe and the United States up to the year 1875, when the third volume of Ingram's edition of The Works presented various “new” Marginalia that he had found in various magazines.(25) The next addition to the canon of the Marginalia was made by George Woodberry in his arbitrarily truncated collection of articles. On the one hand his end-note to Volume 7 (“Criticism”) in 1895 asserts: “The Editors have omitted from the ‘Marginalia,’ first, all passages printed elsewhere in the critical writings ... thirdly, remarks on obscure authors and books, and other matter of like ephemeral nature.”(26) He also thought that the revisions and changes in the series were attributable to Griswold alone. On the other hand Woodberry for his full selection searched out a few uncollected articles, and then devised titles for all — altogether a far from auctorial edition of the Marginalia. Not much better was James A. Harrison's text in the 1902 17-volume edition, averring that “the entire body of ‘Marginalia“... is given here” (16.viii), whereas Installments VII and XII were omitted and unrecorded “corrections” were freely Introduced.

Killis Campbell, in reviewing Harrison's edition, was the first to suggest that Griswold's edition of 1850 had some authority from Poe himself.(27) In his excellent 1909 Selections from the Critical Writings of ... Poe, F. C. Prescott has a sensible summary of printings of Marginalia, with penetrating comments, and he adds mention of the still missing Installment XII in the March 1848 Graham's. In the same year (1909) Killis Campbell again noted the missing Installment VII, previously discovered by Ingram, and apparently overlooked by Harrison.(28)

Almost forty years later came the first attempt to publish the complete series of the earlier 291 Marginalia articles — in John Carl Miller's Edgar Allan Poe: Marginalia (1981). It is an attractive, well-printed text, but it lacks the numbers for ready citation, any notes of reference and explication, and scholarly accuracy.(29) The volume still left unsupplied the need for a truly correct, definitive text. T. O. Mabbott had always planned to include, in his complete edition of Poe's works, the full sets of the essay — notes, i.e., the Pinakidia, Marginalia, etc., each one numbered consecutively and matching the numbers of his frequent references [page xix:] to them in his Tales and Sketches (and in my subsequent volume, Imaginary Voyages). In view of the continuity of themes, allusions, references, and verbal concepts, Poe's material in this genre (from 1835 to 1849) comprises this volume, issued directly after his fiction. The commentary notes frequently indicate the interrelationship of his creative and his discursive or expository writing, underscoring the need of an integrated presentation of the Brevities — Poe's assumed title, which I have adopted for this volume. Not until 1943 was there any effort to furnish the texts of the missing Marginalia, and the presentation was devoid of real scholarliness and comprehensible organization, although it was a commendable effort.(30) E. H. O‘Neill offered the texts of MM 170-175 and 200 plus a very confused mass of small articles in the edition of 1850 along with references to the reviews of Poe printed by Harrison that were the magazine source from which came the majority of the “new” or non-Harrison 1850 items. Confusing to the reader is also his use of the numbers of the 1850 items as they had been corrected in Stoddard's 1884 edition (advancing all numbers by one after the duplicate no. 160 of the 1850 edition). Since O‘Neill failed to designate what passage in each Marginalia entry had been excerpted from the full review, and annotated none of this material, the value was very limited. He says initially: “He [Griswold] made a new text, dropping and adding for no apparent reason,” but later sensibly posits “notes or revised manuscripts that have disappeared” (p. 246). This 1943 article was the last feeble thrust at a completion of the canon of the full Marginalia.

In the phrase “full Marginalia” are implicitly ambiguous elements, to be sure, since there can be no doubt that the executor selected as the editor of the posthumous “works of Poe” had to have all of his copy texts designated by the author himself, but Poe's role has to be inferred. Griswold is invariably assumed to have been Poe's choice, since he was a well known and highly competent anthologist, energetic and well acquainted with the contemporary literati and with Poe. He was also unfriendly and not inclined to favor Poe's general aims or standards as Poe's numerous critical jibes at his work indicated. There has never been discovered any proof of Poe's selection in Poe's own writing — merely Mrs. Clemm's statement that it was his “express wish” to have Griswold as editor. This was in her “power of attorney” drawn up by the lawyerhusband of Sarah Anna Lewis, her abettor in the arrangement, as of October 20, 1849. It is true that Griswold, calculatingly, agreed to the “assignment” less than two weeks after his malicious “Ludwig” editorial denouncing Poe — for he managed to profit from the regular sales of this popular, oft — reprinted set of four volumes. It must be remembered that within three months, by January 1850, he had prepared two bulky [page xx:] volumes of the poems and tales, and by December 1850 a third volume, containing, in the essay material, the Marginalia and Fifty Suggestions.(31) Surely, Poe's papers, almost all discarded after being printed, had to be helpfully preëdited for this rapid and presumably complicated revision. The work on the 1850 Marginalia was especially complicated, since 291 articles were first reduced to 201, next shifted about drastically, and then augmented by 25 “new” articles which were entirely excerpted from reviews in four different journals dating from the years 1835 to 1845. Could and would Griswold alone have shown this particularity of search and excerpting judgment without Poe's direction for the Marginalia of 1850 (see the table in the SM Introduction showing the provenance of the 25 “new” items)?

There is, however, an apparent obstacle in our attributing to Poe alone all the credit for reshaping and reordering all the Marginalia. Griswold himself wishes a bit of it, and falsely implies, as is his habit, too much responsibility. In the “Memoir of the Author” that he included in the third volume in December after it came out in the October International Magazine (1.325-44), he builds up his charges of plagiarism by Poe from “Blackwood's Magazine” and a poem by Longfellow and ends with this canard: “In his ‘Marginalia’ he borrowed largely especially from Coleridge, and I have omitted in the republication of these papers, numerous paragraphs which were rather compiled than borrowed from one of the profoundest and wisest of our own scholars” (3.xlix [[1:xlix or 3:xxxiii]]). This is probably a double falsehood, for there is only one article of Coleridge origin (M 193, from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”) — and that is fully acknowledged. If Griswold is airily alluding to the Introductions of the nephew, Henry Nelson Coleridge, it is pointless since the borrowings from this book are in the Pinakidia which he — or rather Poe — had omitted. Was he here merely maliciously drawing upon Poe's frequent citation of Coleridge's ideas in other works? Next, Griswold mysteriously alludes to H. B. Wallace. It is true that a large number of the borrowings from “Landor” (most of MM 223-286) disappear from the 1850 set of the reprinted articles, but are we certain that Poe had no hand in this process? These are not the brightest or best of the Marginalia. Griswold is probably claiming credit here for Poe's discrimination. The passage is not definite evidence of Griswold's revisionary hand. (For the excised articles see the table of comparisons in the Supplementary Marginalia section of the Introduction.)

Moreover, twenty changes, almost all substantive, were made in [page xxi:] articles reprinted from the first set of Marginalia, most of them undoubtedly from Poe himself: e.g., “grace” changed to “nare,” “G——” to “Fuller,” “S.” to “Sullivan” and a “drama” to “Witchcraft” by C. Mathews, or new parentheses inserted for personal comments. The list of these variants is given below as proof that Poe's touch was prominent in determining the full scope and text of the 226 articles of the 1850 printing. The matter is discussed in full in the Supplementary Marginalia section below.

It must suffice to say there that there are several arguments in this “ambiguous” matter militating against using in full the texts at least of the 201 surviving articles instead of the original magazine printings. One is the extremely careless printing of the 1850 edition, which would fill the articles of the Brevities with obviously compositorial errors (e.g., see the duplication of no. 160). Second, the absence from the scene of the correcting and revising mind of Poe the author would make the text other than fully authoritative — to which we must add the clearly invidious nature of Griswold, regardless of his expertise as editor in general. Also, there were obviously unintended gaps in the sheaf of Marginalia copy-texts left to the executor. Hence, I must employ this approach: The substantive changes are given below and wherever significant are also given in the commentary — notes of the main Marginalia of my text. The canon of the 226 articles as a whole is regarded as Poe — determined; therefore the 25 additions (of SM) are considered to be Poe's “supplements” to the main text of the Marginalia and are annotated as fully as the rest of the text.

VARIANTS IN SUBSTANTIVES IN THE 1850 MARGINALIA, PRESUMABLY AUTHORIZED BY POE

—————————————

THE MARGINALIA ABROAD

Among the nations of Europe the Marginalia early evoked more interest than at home, as a few details chiefly for France and Italy may prove. Charles Baudelaire found them fascinating and incorporated ideas and verbal echoes into his own prose and poetry, even naming his journal Mon coeur mis à nu,(32) and for his “Notes Nouvelles sur Edgar Poe” (1857), began Part IV, with a translation of no. 22 of Fifty Suggestions.(33) Baudelaire's references to the two sections of the 1850 edition, which he managed to acquire in 1853,(34) helped to convince the French literati of the superlative importance of Poe's “Brevities,” which became increasingly well known and discussed in French criticism. We find Catulle Mendes, the important editor, writing a laudatory “Introduction” to thirteen translated Marginalia items in La République des Lettres, 3/20/76, pp. 131-32. Emile Hennequin, in his edition of Baudelaire's Contes Grotesques (1882) added 108 of the Marginalia (pp. 201-95). Next, Victor Orban, in his selection of Poe's works called Edgar A. Poe (1908), published a group of the Marginalia, (pp. 119-36); and he followed this with 250 translated as Marginalia with sparse notes (Paris, 1912; also 1913).(35) The summit of literary interest and distinction, perhaps, is manifested in Paul Valéry's 1927 translation with notes, “Quelques fragments des marginalia.” This evoked Rene Fernandat's commentary in 1929.(36) [page xxiii:] More recently we find a reprint, with comments, of Valéry's Fragments.(37) Finally, the series of respectful, almost reverent productions ends with Préfaces et Marginalia (1983), using assorted translations and bearing minimal notes for the fewer than half of the included Marginalia articles, plus a good Introductory description, by Claude Richard, of French translations.(38) Unfortunately, Richard in his Preface and notes completely overlooks Poe's role in the 1850 selections and changes. There are, of course, reprints of various of these translations, usually excerpted, in successive editions of Poe's works.

The attention paid to Poe's Marginalia in Italy, through translations and journalistic discussion, has been considerable, but consequent upon the French publications, for the most part. The first translation that I have detected is in Edgar Allan Poe: La Vita e It opere, with Marginalia selections (Turin, 1896). This was followed by A. Quattrini's translation of the Marginalia alone (Florence, 1914). Much later came a surge of interest shown in Paolo Masella Scarpis' volume (Milan, 1946), then a translated selection by D. Pasolini in the journal L‘Immagine (1949), and finally Luigi Berti's Marginalia.(39) This includes also the Fifty Suggestions and notes which, while far from full, are occasionally helpful (as a few of my notes acknowledge). This has become the standard Italian version.(40)

It is probable that almost every other language group of Europe (and probably the Japanese) has sponsored a translation of the Marginalia by this time, later and less thoroughly than the Italians and French, to be sure. As examples, I note a translation of a small selection of Marginalia into Polish in Nowej Gazety, 1908, no. 2. While the German editions have concentrated on the tales and poems, the four-volume edition of 1973-74 included a goodly selection of the Marginalia with notes.(41) Spanish language publishers have concentrated on the imaginative works of Poe, but the great Argentinian writer of fiction Julio Cortazar in 1956 supplied the gap with his translation of the Marginalia.(42) It will surely soon be possible for every center of literary culture to enjoy and study the striking and provocative works which constitute the Brevities, in which the texts as submitted or authorized by Poe are carefully delimited and fully presented for the first time.

MARGINALIA INSTALLMENTS IN THE BREVITIES

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page xv:]

18.  See Frank Luther Mott, History of American Magazines (1930), 1.677 — 81.

19.  For the loci of 18 references, see Pollin, PD 120. See also Poe's sketch of Langtree in the 12/41 Graham's (H 15.232).

20.  Letters 415-16, dated 1/13/49. See below for part of the text.

21.  See the “List” at the end of Ostrom's article in PS (n. 3, above) for the rates of the magazines: Graham's=$4 a page; Godey's=$5 “a Graham-page.”

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page xvi:]

22.  John W. Robertson, A Bibliography of the Writings of ... Poe (1934), 2.162. TOM, Tales 1112 followed him in his headnote.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page xvii:]

23.  See Poe's letter of 1/21/49 to Annie Richmond (Letters 417-19) anent 50 pages of “Marginalia” sent to SLM, for publication, 5 per month. Only 5 did appear, up to 9/49. A private note from TOM reports that the poet Ridgely Torrence, on the staff of the NYPL, spoke of having seen a roll of Marginalia owned by Edmund C. Stedman.

24.  For the last M installments, Poe dipped repeatedly into the writings of Horace Binney Wallace (1817-52), brilliant lawyer and art and literary critic, who published as “Landor” by which name alone Poe seems to have known him. For the short life of Wallace, a suicide in Paris, see George E. Hatvary, ... Wallace (Boston 1977), especially chapter 3, on Poe, Wallace, and Griswold considered together; for Poe's numerous borrowings, see Hatvary's article in American Literature, 1966, 38.365-72, too briefly presented for its important information.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page xviii:]

25.  For the two vols. of the BJ that Mrs. Whitman sent to Ingram, early in 1874, enabling him to add articles to his almost completed four-vol. set (London: A. C. Black, 1874-75), see John C. Miller, John Henry Ingram's Poe Collection (1960), p. xxix. Ingram reduced the 1850 set of 226 items to 217 (because of “duplicates” in the reviews) before adding “new” Marginalia articles, in vol. 3.

26.  This is on 7.431 of the 1914 Scribner's reprint. [[7.355 of the 1894-1895 edition — JAS]]

27.  K. Campbell, Nation, 12/4/1902, 75.445-47. [[This anonymous review has been attributed more plausibly to George E. Woodberry. Campbell's articles are usually signed, and one can understand why Woodberry would wish to remain anonymous in negatively reviewing Harrison's competing edition — JAS]] He averred too that Griswold, like Poe, had spliced articles in the testamentary papers, for the posthumous edition.

28.  Prescott, Selections (rep. ed., N. Y.: Gordian Press, 1981, with new Preface and Intro.), pp. 346-48; Killis Campbell, Nation, 12/23/1909, 83.623-24.

29.  Pollin, PS, 1982, 15.43-44.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page xix:]

30.  Edward H. O‘Neill, American Literature, 1943, 15.238-50: “The Poe-Griswold-Harrison Texts of the ‘Marginalia.’ ”

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page xx:]

31.  See Quinn, p. 754; also his expose of Griswold's “execution” of Poe's reputation and, in part, works, through selection and forgery of documents (668-678) — actually somewhat exaggerated. There is need of a study of the “maneuvering” of the executorship, involving Mrs. Clemm and Mrs. Lewis, for which I have been collecting materials.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page xxii:]

32.   Published in the Oeuvres posthumes, 1887, this comes from M 194.

33.  Curiously, this is called “Marginalia 239” by the modern editors of Baudelaire, Y.G. Le Dantec (Pleiade ed.), p. 1142, and Jacques Crepet (1933), p. 328, coming in fact from Victor Orban's 1912 translation of Ingram's merged collection as the authoritative text.

34.  See W. T. Bandy, ed., Edgar Allan Poe: Seven Tales (1971), p. 6.

35.  This text, apparently considered standard thereafter, translating the dubious text of Ingram, is dated peculiarly, with different national catalogues giving 1912, 1913, and 1914. 1 have examined that of 1912.

36.  In Muse Française, 7/10/29, 8.407-14, responding to Valéry's, in Commerce, Winter 1927, 14.11-41.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page xxiii:]

37.  Valéry, Edgar Poe: Quelques Fragment des Marginalia (Montpellier, 1980; 47 pages).

38.  “Prefaces et Marginalia, ed. and tr. by Claude Richard et al. (Aix: Alinea, 1983).

39.  “Luigi Berti, Marginalia (Milan: Mondadori, 1949; 336 pages). This too is based on the Ingram text.

40.  See the attribution by R. Bianchi, in “... I Marginalia ... ,” Rivista diEstetica (Univ. of Padua), 1966, 11.408-22.

41.  Edgar Allan Poe Werke, vol. IV (Freiburg: Walter, 1973), pp. 705-77, 961-75.

42.  This two-volume work, Obras en Prosa de Edgar Allan Poe (Univ. of Puerto Rico Press, 1956; also reprinted), 2.581-717, uses the text of the 1850 ed.