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CHIVERS'
LIFE OF POE.
EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY
RICHARD BEALE DAVIS.
FROM THE MANUSCRIPTS
IN THE HENRY E.
HUNGTINGTON LIBRARY,
SAN MARION, CALIFORNIA.
——♦——
NEW YORK:
E. P. DUTTON & CO., INC.,
1952.
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Contents
| [[PAGE]] | |||
| [Frontispiece | 1] | ||
| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | 5 | ||
| INTRODUCTION | 9 | ||
| TEXT AND TEXDTUAL NOTES | |||
| [Title Page | 21] | ||
| Preliminary Remarks | 22 | ||
| Birth, Life and Death | 34 | ||
| Golden Letters | 38 | ||
| My First Correspondence with Poe | 39 | ||
| Conversations with Poe | 40 | ||
| Poe's Personal Appearance | 53 | ||
| [Biography and Biographer, fragments | 65] | ||
| Poe and Griswold | 69 | ||
| Poe as Poet | 73 | ||
| Poe's Tales | 78 | ||
| Poe's Criticism | 81 | ||
| Analysis of His Genius | 85 | ||
| EXPLANATORY NOTES | 101 | ||
| INDEX | 101 |
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Notes:
The covers and title page of the original printing use as a border, the typographical border that was used in 1827 for Poe's Tamerlane and Other Poems.
Richard Beale Davis was born in Accomac, VA on June 3, 1907. He died in Knoxville, TN on March 30, 1981. He married Lois Camp Bullard on 25 August 1936. She died on April 9, 1994. Both are buried in Petersburg, VA. They had no children. He received his BA degree from Randolph-Macon College in 1927, and his MA (1933) and PhD (1936) from the University of Virginia. He taught at the University of Tennessee from 1847 until his retirement in 1977.
Technically, the contents of this disseration are protected by copyright, but with Dr. Davis himself having died decades ago, and there being no readily identifiable heir or estate, it has not been possible to secure formal permission. The firm of E. P. Dutton no longer exists, following a series of buyouts beginning in 1975. This text, then, is presented under a broad assumption of fair use, and with the idea that Dr. Davis would have been pleased to have his work widely available for use, for educational purposes and without any charge for access. If a reasonable claim for copyright can be documented, please contact the Poe Society of Baltimore to arrange for permission, or to request that we remove the material.
A note that appears prior to the frontispiece states:
This first edition of
CHIVERS' LIFE OF POE
is limtied to fifteen hundred copies.
There was never a second edition.
[inside front flap:]
CHIVERS’
LIFE OF POE
Edited with an Introduction by
RICHARD BEALE DAVIS
From the Manuscript in the Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, California
ILLUSTRATED WITH FRONTISPIECE
Dr. Thomas Holley Chivers and his association with Edgar Allan Poe are well known to all Poe students and collectors; this actual assembling and scholarly annotation of the manuscript for the first time in the one hundred years since it was written, will be in the nature of a delightful surprise to many. It is a work which has never before been published, and which combines the academic and the popular to an unusual degree.
Dr. Chivers, a Southern physician and planter of the first half of the nineteenth century, was deeply interested in poetry and literature, did some writing and, more especially, knew Poe personally and made himself an authority on the man and his work. He had corresponded with Poe for several years before making his acquaintance in New York City in 1845. He became his
(Continued on Flap II)
[inside back flap:]
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disciple and apologist, and his Life shines with, intelligent insight.
For the Poe specialist, “there are several new points on Poe as well as an interesting analysis of his genius,” to quote from the introduction by Mr. Davis. For others there is a dreamlike sense of being transported backward in time a hundred years to the days when Poe lived at 195 East Broadway, and Dr. Chivers walked there with him by way of Nassau and Ann Streets and Chatham Square. There is also the affecting account of the day Dr. Chivers visited Poe when he was ill in bed, and Virginia fluttered in and out, offering them some of the lemonade she herself drank for her “incurable bronchitis.” Sensible, motherly Mrs. Clemm, concerned for her son-in-law's health, talked long and earnestly with Dr. Chivers about him.
The Life is not a complete one, but it is throughout a series of illuminated fragments sewed dexterously together by an editor wonderfully suited to the task; what is here is invaluable and full.
There is in the work of this contemporary and early appraiser of Poe something akin to divination, in appreciation and recognition; the work, as here presented, is of the greatest importance to later critics, biographers and followers.
Richard Beale Davis, the editor of Chivers’ Life Of Poe, is in the English Department of the University of Tennessee, but the basic materials of this delightful work are housed in the famed Huntington Library in California.
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[S:0 - THC52, 1952] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Bookshelf - Chivers' Life of Poe - (1952)