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Current Poe Studies

A meeting will be held this month at the Modern Language Association national meeting on Saturday, December 30, in New York to discuss the feasibility of a new international association of Poe scholars. The meeting will feature talks by the president of the Baltimore Poe Society and past president of the Melville Society of America, proposals emerging from this meeting will be reported on in the next issue of Poe Studies. The friends of the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond sponsored a lecture on “Poe’s ‘Beautiful Woman’ as Symbol: A New Reading of Ligeia and Related Poems” by Professor T. Edward Crawley (Hampden-Sydney College) November 29. The Bronx Poe Center at the Grand Concourse and Kingsbridge Road, under the joint sponsorship of the Bronx Community College of the City University of New York and the Bronx Council on the Arts, was dedicated May 11.

Recently Published

Papers on Poe: Essays in Honor of John Ward Ostrom, edited by Richard P. Veler (Springfield, Ohio: Chantry Music Press at Wittenberg University, 1972) collects seventeen essays on Poe along with an introductory tribute to Professor Ostrom, editor of Poe’s Letters. ( This volume is reviewed in the present issue of Poe Studies.) Jean Alexander’s Affidavits of Genius: Edgar Allan Poe and the French Critics, 1847-1924 (Port Washington, New York: Kennikat Press, 1971) collects seventeen essays from Forgues to Valery, with a sixty-nine page introduction by Alexander. Andre Karatson’s Edgar Allan Poe et le groupe des ecrivains du “Nyugat” en Hongrie studies another aspect of Poe’s impact on foreign writers. W. T. Bandy’s Edgar Allan Poe: Seven, Tales, with a French translation and prefatory essay by Charles Baudelaire (New York: Schocken, 1971) prints English and French texts side by side (reviewed in the present issue of Poe Studies). Stuart Levine’s Edgar Poe: Seer and Craftsman (Deland, Florida: Everett/Edwards, 1972), noticed in PN, 3 (1970), 23, as forthcoming, was published last month. Daniel Hoffman’s Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1972) records Hoffman’s varied responses to the enigma of Poe. David Halliburton’s as yet not received Edgar Allan Poe: A Phenomenological View has just been published by Princeton University Press.

Forthcoming

In January Duke University Press will publish Poe in Northlight: Scandinavian Response to His Life and Work by Carl L. Anderson. In April the University of Wisconsin Press will publish Poe’s Fiction: Romantic Irony in the Gothic Tales by G. R. Thompson. Bobbs-Merrill is planning a one-volume anthology of Poe’s complete fiction, fully annotated, under the editorship of Stuart Levine. Joseph V. Ridgely is preparing a new edition of Arthur Gordon Pym for the Garrett Press series in “American Fiction, 1774-1860.” Pym will be the first of a series of extensively annotated editions, each of which will contain an introduction, a textual note, a photo-facsimile of the first edition, and extensive textual and explanatory notes. Claude Richard has completely re-edited and greatly expanded the Poe volume in the prestigious Pleiade series (Paris: Gallimard). This new, two-volume edition has, besides a number of new translations, exhaustive notes and commentary. Date of publication as yet uncertain, though possibly early next year.

New Journals

Three new journals hospitable to Poe studies have been inaugurated. The Journal of American Humor, edited by H. James Clark (Wisconsin), plans a special issue devoted to Poe’s comic works. Studies in American Fiction, edited by James Nagel (Northeastern), begins publication in the spring of 1973. The Mystery & Detection Annual, edited by Donald K. Adams (Occidental), contains in its first issue four Poe articles.