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INTRODUCTION
In the spring of 1984, as interested members of the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore, we arranged to spend a day examining the collection of Poe memorabilia which Amelia F. Poe had given to the Enoch Pratt Free Library in 1936. While all the significant material in this collection had been published in 1941 in Edgar Allan Poe Letters and Documents in the Enoch Pratt Library (edited by Arthur Hobson Quinn and Richard Hart and published in New York by Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints), we were interested in examining not only the original documents but also any other miscellaneous items that might be there. We are very indebted to the following staff members of the Enoch Pratt Library for their kindness in making these documents available: Richard Hart, Chairman of the Humanities Division, Emeritus; Neil Jordahl, the present Head of the Humanities Division; and Averil Jordan Kadis, Chief of the Public Relations Division.
Among the unpublished items in the Amelia F. Poe collection is a notebook: it is 10 5/8 inches high; 8 3/8 inches wide; 1/2 inch thick at the spine (which is bound in simulated brown leather extending an inch on both the front and back boards which are covered with marbled paper); and only 3/8 inches thick at the front, as the result of many pages having been torn from the book.
A Pratt Library note, loose inside the front cover, identifies the notebook as follows: “Contains a list of names, mostly of friends and acquaintances, whom Poe hoped to secure as subscribers to his projected magazine, The Stylus.” This note is undated and unsigned, but was doubtless prepared by the Pratt staff for one of its many exhibits of Poe materials.
We felt at once that, at this point in Poe scholarship, the publication of this notebook would be very useful to the many students of Poe and his works. We are very grateful to Mrs. Kadis, and to the Director and Trustees of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, for permission to edit this document and to have it published in the series of Poe pamphlets produced through the co-operation of the Pratt Library, the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore, and the Langsdale Library of the University of Baltimore.
It very soon became apparent to the present editors that, while the notebook did contain lists of potential subscribers to Poe's projected magazines, it was also a list of potential contributors, and of other miscellaneous persons who had written to Poe for a variety of different reasons. The study of Poe's relations with each individual on the list [page 6:] threatened to become in itself a miniature doctoral dissertation! At this point, we decided to make the material in the notebook available to the world of Poe scholarship. The present publication might well be sub- titled, “Some materials toward an analysis of Poe's relation to the persons listed in his MEMORANDA book.’‘
We do plan, however, to present our theories on this subject on October 6, 1985, at the sixty-third annual Commemoration Program of the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore.
Jeffrey A. Savoye, Bibliographer and Corresponding Secretary of the Poe Society
Alexander G. Rose III, Secretary-Treasurer and Historian of the Poe Society.
Baltimore, Maryland,
June 26, 1985
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Notes:
The expanded edition of Poe's letters in 2008 has provided additional information on individuals on the list, as has access to various resources on the Internet and work on the website. Where relevant, such information has been added to the annotated portion of the original publication notes, in double square brackets.
Entry #2 suggests that the list was started prior to May 1, 1848 as Chapin signed a deed for a new house on that date, and thus moved on from Bond Street. Entry #239 would seem to date at least the final part of the list to about June of 1848 since Poe's note says “write” and he did write to James Bayard Taylor by June 15, 1848. George W. Evelth, at entry #90, cannot be before December 1845, when he started his correspondence with Poe. On the back of Poe's letter of October 10, 1840 to Pliny Earle, there is a short list of names written in pencil, probably by Earle. These names do not appear on Poe's own list. Entry #46 for Augustus B. Meek suggests that the list may have been started about 1843 since at that time he provided a cipher to John Tomlin, who forwarded it to Poe for solution, or 1845, when he contributed a poem to the BJ. It is, of course, quite feasible that at some point, Poe began to make this list or supplemented it from an earlier one, or a stack of letters from an earlier date. On entry #230, Poe asks “where is he?” Stockon, was a minister who had been assigned to Phildelphia until about September 15, 1847, when he was reassigned to Ohio. (The Cincinnati Enquirer for September 4, 1847 has a brief announcement of his reassignment, p. 3, col. 7).
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[S:0 - SFAT, 1986] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Lectures - Such Friends as These (Alexander G. Rose and Jeffrey Alan Savoye, 1986)