The Wm. Duane copy of Southern Literary Messenger (with Poe's manuscript changes, made about 1839)

8vo. (about 10 in x 6 1/2 in). Bound in full and half morocco, in red morocco solander cases.

There were many copies of the original volumes of the Southern Literary Messenger, but this copy, with Poe's pencilled annotations, presumably made about 1839 in preparation for Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840). Only one owner left his name in the volumes, William Duane (1808-1882), who had been a contributor to the Messenger. The provenance of this entry is established as authoritatively as possible, given the sketchy and often convoluted bits of information available:

• Lawrence Fox, private collector (purchased from the auction of the library of H. Bradley Martin, January 1990). 1. Edgar Allan Poe (the presence of Poe's handwritten changes, made in 1839, suggest that the volumes were originally his own, no longer needed after the printing of Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque); 2. William Duane, Jr. (1808-1882) (some time before 1893, Poe's two letters to Duane were already in the collection of Ferdinand Julius Dreer, of Philadelphia, suggesting that Duane”s library was dispersed within a few years of his death. Both letters are specifically listed in the catalog of his library, privately printed in 1893. Dreer is acknowledged in general terms in the preface to G. E. Woodberry's 1885 Edgar Allan Poe, suggesting that Dreer had the letters by 1885); 3. Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) (volume II borrowed for Poe by Henry Beck Hirst); 4. William or Lewis A. Leary, a bookseller in Philadelphia, PA (volume II mistakenly sold by Mrs. Clemm); 5. Bookseller in Richmond, VA (volume II only); 6. Publishers of the Southern Literary Messenger (volume II only, purchased from the Richmond bookseller); 7. William Duane (volume II repurchased by Duane, through a friend, from the SLM publishers); 8. J. H. Whitty (the proper senquece of Whitty's ownership has beenn uncertain. Whitty claimed in his edition of Poe's Complete Poems of 1911, p. xlviii, that he had “found the volumes some years ago in an old Boston second-hand book-shop,” but did not specify the store and allowed it to be presumed that he still owned them years later. Mabbott, 1978, 2:1404, states that he personally recorded changes in the volumes “before 1925,” and in 1969, 1:583, that Whitty allowed him to examine the Duane volumes. Copies of Whitty's correspondence, in his papers at Duke University, show that Whitty purchased the volumes about May 7, 1894 at Burnham's Antique Bookstore on Cornhill Street in Boston, that the seller at the 1898 auction was apparently Whitty himself, and that Mabbott looked at the volumes in New York in 1922, prior to the Hart auction and not while they were in Whitty's possession); 9. George H. Hart (purchased for $9 at a Bangs auction in Boston, November 21, 1898, item 814, and sold at auction by Anderson Galleries, NY, October 16-19, 1922, item 1040. ABC lists the sale price as $200); 10. Mrs. Florence Meyer Blumenthal (1875-1930) (After her death many of the items in her Poe collection were sold to the well-known New York bookdealer Gabriel Wells) 11. Gabriel Wells (1861-1946) (noted in the American Book Collector for April 1933 as part of a collection of important Poe material “just acquired.” There is no specific mention of this copy in the 1940 bibliography prepared by Heartman and Canny, although Heartman was certainly aware of the information since he was the editor of the magazine. The 1940 bibliography does include several other important items noted in the 1933 list, stating that they are still owned by Wells at that time, but, several of these have been transfered to H. B. Martin by the time the revised 1943 bibliography was issued. One may presume that Martin saw the items listed in the 1940 bibliography, and arranged to purchase them, as a block or in installments.) 12. H. Bradley Martin (1906-1988) (The Duane copies were probably in Martin's collection by about 1943, and certainly prior to April 1959, when they were included in a exhibit at Yale, see “Quote the Raven,” Yale University Library Gazette, vol. 33, no. 4, April 1959, p. 148-149, items 24 and 26. His collection was sold by Sotheby's in New York, January 30-31, 1990); 13. Lawrence Fox, private collector (purchased from the H. B. Martin auction)