Text: James A. Harrison, “The New Poe,” New York Times Saturday Review of Books (New York, NY), September 27, 1902, p. 652, cols. 3-4

[page 652, col. 3:]

Kindly permit me to add a few supplementary details to the very appreciative review of “The Virginia Poe” by Mr. Mathews in the recent number of THE NEW YORK TIMES SATURDAY REVIEW OF BOOKS, details calling attention more explicitly to the special claims of the Virginia edition. Probably no one but the editor himself can grasp the numerous items of change and novelty included in a work of 5,000 or 6,000 pages based upon entirely original research.

1. An entirely authentic text. The editor's method was to dismiss Griswold from consideration and go back to Poe himself. The foundation of the edition is (a) Poe's own copy of The Broadway Journal, in which he reprinted all of his work up to December, 1845, that he considered worth preserving. This republication included nearly all the Tales and Poems, many of the criticisms, and a great mass of unsigned comment, personality, and review appearing for the first time in Volumes XII. and XIII. of the present edition, absolutely authenticated by Poe's “P.” or other form of autograph in pencil placed by him opposite the article in question. (d) Poe's own copy of “The Raven, and Other Poems,” published in 1845 and now in possession of the Century Association of New York City. This is the famous J. Lorimer Graham copy and contains on one of its blank pages the inscription, “R. W. Griswold: Poe's Own Copy.” This copy Poe abundantly corrected and annotated, making on the margin of “The Raven” thirty-seven changes! These changes were intended by the poet for a future edition, and are all embodied in the Virginia edition, along with numerous others made by Poe on the margins of the same volume. (c) Poe's own copy of the Tales, (twelve in number,) collected by Duyckinck, and published in 1845. Poe corrected these Tales in numerous places in his own handwriting, and the Virginia embodies all his corrections. (d) Poe's own copy of “Eureka,” containing his own very numerous autograph corrections. Some of these corrections were used by Prof. Woodberry in his edition of 1894, but by no means all. The Virginia edition contains them all. (e) The original files of The Southern Literary Messenger for 1835, 1836, and January , 1837, for Volumes VIII. and IX. The original files of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, and Graham's Magazine for Volumes X., XI., and XIV. The original files of Godey for “The Literati of New York City,” (Volume XV.) The fifteen sets of “Marginalia” are derived directly from the original sources in The Democratic Review, Graham, Godey, and The Southern Literary Messenger. So likewise with the long articles on autography, cryptography, the Pinakidia, &c. — all come directly from the original source. So much for the text.

2. Having established the authenticity of the text on a firm foundation, the next question was how best to arrange the large amount of material. Immediately the chronological order suggested itself as the only true and logical order in which to study the evolution of Poe's art from its crude, imitative beginnings to its powerful, original development in the middle and terminal periods. This order had never been adopted before. Poe's writings had been left by Griswold in a jumble, without intelligent editing, an indiscriminate mass of fiction, poetry, criticism, and miscellany, and in this condition they remained up to the present day. Prof. Woodberry arranged the tales delightfully for the purposes of the purely aesthetic student, but there was no attempt at the order of evolution, the chronological order, and the student of Poe was as much as ever at a loss where to place a given tale, poem, or essay.

This difficulty is now removed, and the exact source as well as date of every production, if known, is indicated in brackets at the beginning of each article.

3. Poe was a profound student of his art; he continually varied the text of his works, printing and reprinting them in differing forms in the contemporary journals, yet never resting till they had reached that perfection of verbal felicity of which he was a past master. This is especially true of his tales and poems. The Virginia edition diligently follows up this habit of Poe's and sets down in abundant notes, in the proper places, all the different changes, whether of amplification or condensation, made by Poe in his own text. There notes involve a most minute and laborious comparison of the original text with the texts printed by Griswold, Ingram, Stoddard, and Woodberry and Stedman. Every deviation from Poe's original is set down. (Volume I. of the Tales) contains nearly 100 pages of these comparative and other explanatory notes gathered by the editor and Prof. Stewart for the use of the Poe student.

4. Mr. Mathews has called attention to the interesting and surprising discover made by the editor of Griswold's peculiar manipulation of “The Literati” papers, substituting five of his papers for five of Poe's.

This is but one of many instances of “snarls straightened out” to which I call attention in my various introductions. One of the most singular and detestable is the case of Hawthorne, against whom Poe is supposed to have cherished animosity. On examining into the matter I found that Poe had written, at three different times, three widely different reviews of Hawthrone, and that Griswold had taken the last of these reviews, written for Godey's in 1847, split it open, inserted another review [column 4:] from Graham's for May, 1842, mutilated the latter, and then continued with the tall fragment of the 1847 review as colophon and conclusion, without a word to explain the procedure! Now all three reviews appear in their chronological places.

Griswold proceeded in the same manner with the two reviews of the famous Davidson sisters, blending two widely distant reviews in one. The snarl of the “Outis-Longfellow-Poe” controversy has been completely disentangled and placed in a clear light, every item set in its chronological place, and the original paragraphing restored as Poe left it. Griswold's “Marginalia” differed widely from Poe's. The reverend gentleman inserted short reviews of Bayard Taylor, William Wallace, &c., among the “Marginalia,” and omitted a large number of interesting entries made by the poet. The insertions have been withdrawn and transferred to their proper places as reviews, while the omissions have been restored.

5. Griswold's treatment of the “Marginalia” brings out the startling discovery that fully forty pages of these interesting jottings as contained in the Virginia edition are new, the omitted portions either having been overlooked or ignored by succeeding editors. The same is true of the long papers on autography and secret writing. The former now appears in two extended parts, the first originally published in the Messenger, and never before reproduced in any of the editions of Poe's works; the second republished from Graham's in its entirety, with the full 128 descriptions and signatures and supplement as given by Poe. Among the interesting signatures and descriptions restored by the Virginia edition, are those of the modest (!) Griswold himself.

The papers on cryptography (secret writing) as exhumed by the present editor from the columns of Graham's are much more extended and elaborate than they appear in existing editions,. Difficult cryptograms illustrative of the theorems accompany the papers, which are further amplified by several supplements. All these amplifications and addenda have been restored, together with the authentic text, and now appear as Poe left them.

[[6.]] Numerous appendices and bibliographical aids are included in the edition, which really aims to be a Poe encyclopedia.

Among these are the famous “Ludwig” poem [[obituary]], published by Griswold in The Tribune a day or two after Poe's death, and afterward amplified into the notorious “Memoir”; the striking contemporary reviews of Poe by Philip Pendleton Cooke and John R. Thompson; the defence of Poe, by George R. Graham; Poe's reply to his critics (during the Messenger period;) “Poe and John Neal,” containing the earliest printed letter and poetical contributions of the poet to The Yankee of 1827; “Poe and Chivers,” an elaborate examination by Prof. Harrison of the Poe-Chivers controversy, with the result established on indubitable evidence that Chivers not Poe, was the plagiarist; a number of new poems attributed to Poe, among them “The Fire Friend [[Fiend]],” extracts from the “Lavante” poem, the Ide poems, (proved by the Virginia editor to be by A. M. Ide of Massachusetts, not by Poe, as Ingram suggests,) and others; Poe's autobiography in his own handwriting furnished by him to Griswold for the notice in “Poets and Poetry of America” and found among the Griswold manuscripts; Poe's long lost “Introduction to the Tales of the Folio Club,” a most interesting fragment, also found among the Griswold manuscripts, printed with the kind permission of Mrs. William M. Griswold, the owner; the first complete bibliography to all Poe's known writings grouped under chronological heads; Poe's autograph notes possibly to “Hans Pfaall,” (Vol. XVI.,) &c.

7. All Poe's correspondence, including authentic texts of letters from and to him, and comprising such rare items as the complete Poe English correspondence, the Duyckinck, Hutchinson, and Snodgrass collections, unpublished letters from Poe and Mrs. Clemm, giving the family genealogy, numerous letters from Mrs. Whitman, “Annie” Neilson, and William Poe, Mrs. Shelton, Mrs. Clemm, Gabriel Harrison, and others, furnished the writer by Miss Ameial F. Poe of Baltimore. The Boston Public Library generously permitted the free use of its invaluable Griswold collection for this volume, with the result that about two-thirds of its contents are new even to Poe specialists.

The layman would never dream of the inaccuracies that swarm in the published versions of Poe's letters, unless he had had access to many of the originals in the Griswold collection. Griswold himself changed his Poe letters to suit his convenience, as revealed by the two versions of the same letter printed side by side in Vol. XVII. of the new edition.

Finally, the del luxe form of the new edition contains much very valuable illustrative matter, such as the unpublished portraits of John Allan, Mrs. Shelton, Mr. Clemm, (father of Virginia Poe), two or three new portraits of Poe, Poe's surroundings aat the University of Virginia, facsimiles of rare title pages and MSS., and the like.

JAMES A. HARRISON,

University of Virginia, Sept. 20, 1902.