Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, vol. I (1840), title page and table of contents

Notes:

The motto from Goethe is from his poem “Meine Göttin” (“My Goddess”), written on September 15, 1780. T. O. Mabbott notes that Poe likely saw it in an article by George Bancroft, “Life and Genius of Goethe” from the North American Review of October 1824 (Mabbott, Poems, p. 118). Bancroft translates these lines as “Dearest in her father's eye / Jove's own darling / Phantasy.” Poe had already quoted these lines in a footnote to his poem “Al Aaraaf” (Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems, 1829, p. 19). There, “Tochter” is correctly capitalized. Pollin and Hansen note this motto as an example of “Poe's faulty use of German” (Pollin and Hansen, The German Face of Edgar Allan Poe, Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1995, pp. 51-52). Poe uses the motto again on his handwritten title page for the proposed edition of “Phantasy Pieces” prepared in 1842 but never published.

On the back of the title page appears the copyright notice:

There is also a notice at the bottom of the page that the book was:

The table of contents shown here is a reasonable imitation of that in the original, though the original includes dot leaders dot leaders running from the title of the tale to the page number, which has not been attempted due to the limitations of XHTML and although variations in our font have made it impractical to match the number and spacing of the dot leaders. In the original, these leaders are carefully arranged so that the dots and spaces of alternating lines switch back and forth, making it easier to follow the line without accidentally slipping up or down. In the original, the table of contents appears on page 7.