Concordance to the Poetry of Edgar Allan Poe, (1989), title page and table of contents

[front flap:]

The first concordance to Poe's poetry was prepared nearly half a century ago, and in recent years a number of Poe scholars have suggested that a new concordance is needed, one that would take account of recent bibliographic discoveries. Elizabeth Wiley's compilation is designed to meet that need. Her Concordance to the Poetry of Edgar Allan Poe the primary requirement for a

reference source of this kind: to draw on all available versions of the poems, print or manuscript, from the most authoritative sources. It is based upon The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe: Volume I: Poems, edited by the late Thomas Olive Mabbott and published by the Harvard University Press in 1969. Poe scholars consider this the finest edition to date, and it is readily available in colleges and universities, as well as in the personal libraries of scholars in the field.

The format of this work was planned to provide easy access to anyone engaged in Poe research. Poems are listed by individual lines (or half-lines, where the whole line is too long) under each different word in the line, except for words that appear so frequently (and, the, and the like) that their inclusion would result in a concordance too unwieldy to use. The omitted words are listed in the introduction, along with information on the publication history of each poem and suggestions for using the concordance.

The purpose of any concordance is to aid scholars in studying an author's use of words. Such studies were undertaken, of course, long before concordances [back flap:] were available. Poe is a particularly apt subject not only because of the richness of his language and iterative patina, but also because he himself, in his role as editor-critic, wrote extensively about other authors’ use of language. In his Marginalia he exalted the “power of words,” with which he felt it was “possible to embody even the evanescence of fancies.”

For Poe, the power, of words lay not only in selecting them meticulomily (and, on occasion, creating neologisms to express the formerly inexpressible). They must also be used correctly, following accepted rules of punctuation and syntax. He sharply criticized those poets who neglected punctuation or wrenched syntax, and he argued that the claim of “poetic license” was the source of “an infinity of sins.” The “true artist,” in Poe's view, would “avail himself of no ‘license’ whatever.”

Having established such stringent standards for judging other authors, Poe has provided scholars with criteria for evaluating his own use of language. Wiley's concordance is a valuable tool for such study. It also provides information that will enable scholars to draw conclusions about Poe's literary style, his social and cultural background, influences upon him by other writers, approximate dating of works for which external evidence is unavailable, and a wide range of other issues related to the poet's life and work.

About the Compiler

Elizabeth Wiley was educated in the Philadelphia public schools and received her undergraduate degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 1950. She had previously studied nursing and practiced in that field for ten years in both this country and Liberia, West Africa. After several years’ experience in the field of public relations, she entered the graduate English program at the University of Pittsburgh, receiving the degrees of Master in Letters (1956) and Doctor of Philosophy (1962). Her college teaching experience included several years at the University of Pittsburgh, two years at the West Virginia Institute of Technology, and twenty-five years at Susquehanna University, from which she retired as Professor of English in 1987. Her area of specialization has been American literature, from colonial times through the nineteenth century.