Text: Ruth Leigh Hudson, “Chapter VI.V,” Poe's Craftsmanship in the Short Story, dissertation, 1935, pp. 624-628 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 624:]

One other notation will conclude my comments upon Poe's revisions. It had to do with a change of detail so slight that it affected in no way the meaning or the effect of the story in which it was made. None of the reasons hitherto given ns motivating Poe in his alterations had anything to do with it. Though I have asserted that the artist rather than the man was responsible for the deletion of certain passages referring to opium, I must confess that it was neither the artist nor the craftsman, but quite humanly Edgar Poe, who made at various times a slight alteration in “William Wilson.” When Poe wrote this tale originally, he made — in something of a hoaxing spirit, I believe — certain incidents and facts in it conform to actual details in his own life. Of the second William Wilson, for example, he wrote, “my namesake was born on the nineteenth of January, 1809 ... this is precisely the date of my own nativity.” This is the form in which the birth-date appears in the Tales of 1840, which we know to have been in the hands of the publishers as early as September. Before the appearance of the volume, however, the tale [page 625:] in circulation in two other forms — in the October, 1839, issue of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine and in The Gift for 1840. In both versions, the birth-date rends January, 1811.” At some time in the fall of 1839, Poe decided, perhaps, to tell “white lie” about his age, and as long as he was telling it he meant to do a good job or it by rendering a possible autobiographical interpretation of his story a [[as]] confirmation of the facts as he had decided them to be. Consequently, he revised his story so that it recorded the nativity date of 1811, the same as that which he gave about his own birth-date in a memorandum to Griswold on March 29, 1841.(26) By 1845 he had evidently decided to alter still further the facts about his own age, and the text of his semi-autobiographical story was made to read, “January, l813,” in order to conform to the new birth-date, which he had adopted. One, of course, connects with this emendation in “William Wilson” the subsequent statement which Poe made about his age in a letter to Griswold, “It is a point of no great importance but, in one of your editions, you have given my sister's age instead of mine. I was born [page 626:] Dec. 1813 — my sister Jan. 1811.”(27) Poe failed, however, to reckon with the methodicalness of his chosen literary executor, with the permanence of his ephemeral magazine texts, and with the assiduity of probing biographers; his hoaxing little lie has been paraded cruelly before a somewhat humorless critical world.

These inferences drawn from a detailed study of Poe's revisions may, on the surface, seem of little significance. Perhaps, after all, his methods of composition and his habits of revision were not “radically different,” as Professor Campbell has suggested,(28) “from the methods employed by other artists of whatever race or age.” Indeed, the greatest significance of his work of revision lies in the fact that we have a clearer record, than is customarily the case, of Poe's changes in the texts of his poems and stories because he had a passion for re-publishing. He did not have the great gift of silent waiting and working possessed by such artists as Milton [page 627:] and Tennyson. At least he was in such a position that he could not afford to wait.

To the author of this study, however, the process of tracing the evolution of a story, from — in some cases — the half-formed idea, through a stage in which the craftsman was still in the process of conceiving it, on into a a [[sic]] state which he deemed good — “the result,” as he himself said, “of natured purpose and very careful elaboration” — has been invaluable. It has brought an appreciation of his development; revelation of a youthful exuberance end bubbling of ideas, which one seldom thinks of him as ever possessing; an understanding of his so great love of richness of phrase and detail that he could not expunge certain things; and then realization of a maturity when form, technique, the more distinctly draws line became to him matter of first importance.

Equally revelatory has been the view of the man at work. A young poet, turned tale-teller in desperation, read, analyzed his reading, and reasoned about the craft of his new occupation in order to produce what the public would “seek with avidity.” Success brought buoyancy and self-confidence; reverses pushed him doggedly back into the treadmill of refurbishing, [page 628:] re-writing, and fresh creation. In sickness and even in despair the creating and revisiting went on. It is the usual picture of a man in search of an unattainable ideal — the ideal of perfect craftsmanship.

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 624:]

26.  Woodberry, I, 358.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 626:]

27.  June, 1849. [[Actually May (?), 1849 — JAS]] This letter is preserved in the Wrenn Library of The University of Texas.

28.  Killis Campbell, The Mind of Poe, 186.