Edgar Allan Poe — “The Lake”

Reading copy:

• “The Lake” — reading copy

Manuscripts and Authorized Printings:

• Text-01 — “The Lake” — 1827, no original manuscript or fragments are known to exist (but this version is presumably recorded in Text-02)
• Text-02 — “The Lake” — 1827 — TAOP — (Mabbott text A — This is Mabbott's copy-text for this early version)
• Text-03 — “The Lake” — about 1828 — “Wilmer” manuscript — (Mabbott text B)
• Text-04 — “The Lake — To —” — 1829 — (speculated revised manuscript made in preparation of ATMP. The changes present in Text-05 are so significant that they were probably not simply made in the typesetting process or in evaluating proof-sheets. Additional changes may have been made as the publication stages proceeded. Since Poe was living in Baltimore at the time of publication, it is likely that he had the opportunity to see and review proof copy, particularly since he was paying for the publication.)
• Text-05 — “The Lake — To —” — 1829 — ATMP — (Mabbott text C)
• Text-06 — “The Lake — To —” — about 1830-1831 — (speculated revision of the poem, in preparation for the publication of POEMS, where it was inserted, in revised form, as section 8 of the longer poem “Tamerlane.” It is possible that Poe used pages from ATMP, modified for the new context. Alternatively, Poe may have written out this relatively short section in a new manuscript.)
• Text-07 — “[The Lake]” — 1831 — incorporated as section 8 of “Tamerlane” in POEMS — (Mabbott text D)
• Text-08 — “The Lake — To —” — 1845 — RAOP — (Mabbott text F — This is Mabbott's copy-text for this final version) (For Griswold's 1850 reprinting of this text, see the entry below, under reprints.)
• Text-09 — “The Lake. To ——” — late 1845 (preface dated October 1845) — Missionary Memorial (for 1846) — (Mabbott text E) (see also several reprints, below)

Reprints:

• “The Lake. To ——” — 1848 — Missionary Memorial (H&C note, pp. 124-125, that this book was reprinted, from the plates of 1846. It was printed again in 1849 for The Missionary Offering for 1850 and yet again in 1853. In 1851, it was apparently called The Christian Souvenir and Missionary Memorials.)
• “The Lake — To ——” — 1850 — WORKS — (Griswold reprints Text-07)  (Mabbott text G)
• “To Lake. To ——” — 1875 — The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol 3: Poems and Essays, ed. J. H. Ingram, Edinburgh, Adam and Charles Black (3:88)
• “The Lake” — 1884 — Tamerlane and Other Poems, ed. Richard Herne Shepherd, London: George Redway (pp. 55-56)  (Having long been thought lost, a copy of the original Tamerlane and Other Poems of 1827 was discovered in the British Museum and printed in this “second edition.” Ingram did not include this poem in his article “The Unknown Poetry of Edgar Poe,” in Belgravia for June 1876, presumably because it was already known from later forms.)
• “The Lake” — June 12, 1904 — Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN), vol. LXXII, no. 164, p. 8, col. 6-7 (acknowledged as by “Edgar Allen [[Allan]] Poe.”)
• “The Lake” — September 22, 1931 — Olean Evening Times (Olean, NY), vol. LXXI, no. 203, p. 14, spread across the middle of the last two columns (acknowledged as “From ‘The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe’.”)

Scholarly and Noteworthy Reprints:

• “The Lake: To ——” — 1894-1895 — The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 10: Poems, eds. E. C. Stedman and G. E. Woodberry, Chicago: Stone and Kimball (10:127, and pp. 224-225)
• “The Lake: To ——” — 1902 — The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 7: Poems, ed. J. A. Harrison, New York: T. Y. Crowell (10:21, and 10:155-156)
• “The Lake: To —” — 1911 — The Complete Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. J. H. Whitty, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co. (pp.128, and pp. 276-277)
• “The Lake: To ——” — 1917 — The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. Killis Campbell, Boston: Ginn and Company (pp. 32-33, and pp. 167-168)
• “The Lake — To —” — 1965 — The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. Floyd Stovall, Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia (p. 23, and pp. 186-187)
• “The Lake” — 1969 — The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 1: Poems, ed. T. O. Mabbott, Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (1:82-86)  (Mabbott gives two versions)
• “The Lake — To —” — 1984 — Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry and Tales, Patrick F. Quinn (New York: Library of America) (p. 37) (reprints Text-07)

Instream Comparative and Study Texts:

• None

Miscellaneous Texts and Related Items:

• “Le lac: à —” — dated 2009, but available in late 2008 — Poèmes d‘Edgar Allan Poe, Paris: Publibook (translation by Jean Hautepierre)

• Heartman, Charles F. and James R. Canny, A Bibliography of First Printings of the Writings of Edgar Allan Poe, Hattiesburg, MS: The Book Farm, 1943.
• Mabbott, Thomas Ollive, ed., The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe (Vol 1 Poems), Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969.
• Morrison, Robert, “Poe's ‘The Lake: To —’,” Explicator, December 1948, vol. 7, item 22