Text: Anonymous, “[comment about Tamerlane and Other Poems],” The Critic (New York, NY), vol. 4, May 10, 1884, p. 222, col. 2

[page 222, column 2, continued:]

‘TAMERLANE AND OTHER POEMS’ was first published in 1827, and was the first book that Poe gave to the world. In the little preface that ushered it in, he says that most of the poems were written in 1821-2, ere he had completed his fourteenth year. They were not intended for publication. ‘Why they are now published,’ he says, concerns no one but himself. Of the smaller pieces he is candid enough to say that ‘perhaps they savor too much of egotism, ‘and that they were written by one too young to have any knowledge of the world but from his own heart. In Tamerlane,’ however, he has endeavored to expose the folly of even risking the best feelings of the heart at the shrine of ambition.’ The book was not published until the poet was nineteen years of age. It bears the name of a Boston printer, Calvin F. S. Thomas, on its title-page, but Mr. Wood- berry, who is writing the Life of Poe for the American Men-of-Letters Series, can find no trace of Thomas in New England, and no record of the book save in the list of new publications given in The North American Review for October, 1827. The copy from which Mr. Herne Shepherd has made the reprint came into the possession of the British Museum in 1867, and is supposed to be unique.