Tamerlane and Other Poems is the first published work by American writer Edgar Allan Poe. The short collection of poems was first published in 1827. Today, it is believed only 12 copies of the collection still exist.
Poe abandoned his foster family, the Allans, and moved to Boston to find work in 1827. Having only minor success, he enlisted in the United States Army. He brought with him several manuscripts, which he paid a printer named Calvin F. S. Thomas to publish. The 40-page collection was called Tamerlane and Other Poems and did not include Poe's name. Distribution was limited to 50 copies and it received no critical attention. The poems were largely inspired by Lord Byron, including the long title poem "Tamerlane", which depicts an historical conqueror who laments the loss of his first romance. Like much of Poe's future work, the poems in Tamerlane and Other Poems include themes of love, death, and pride.
Poe's first published collection is so rare that after Poe's death, the editor and critic Rufus Wilmot Griswold believed it had never existed until one was found in 1859. It has since been recognized as one of the rarest first editions in American literature.
Background
Edgar Poe was unable to complete studies at the University of Virginia due to gambling debts. He left the university in March 1827[1] and the already-strained relationship with his foster father, John Allan, grew worse. Poe determined to go to Boston, where he was born.[2] When Poe's biological mother Eliza Poe died, the only object she left him was a watercolor painting of the city, on the back of which she had written, "For my little son Edgar, who should ever love Boston, the place of his birth, and where his mother found her best and most sympathetic friends."[3] John Allan, a merchant in Richmond, Virginia, refused to give his foster son the $12 for the trip, though it is likely Poe got the money from his foster mother Frances Allan.[4] John Allan was not aware of Poe's decision or whereabouts and, not concerned, wrote "I'm thinking Edgar has gone to Sea to seek his own fortunes".[5] After arriving in Boston in April 1827, Poe served briefly as clerk for a wholesale merchandise warehouse on the waterfront, then as an office clerk and reporter for an obscure newspaper, the Weekly Report.[6] After several weeks, in desperation, he enlisted in the United States Army for a five-year term under the pseudonym "Edgar A. Perry"; he gave his age as 22, though he was only 18,[7] likely because he would have needed parental consent if under 21.[8] He was assigned to the First Regiment of Artillery and stationed at Boston Harbor's Fort Independence.[9]
Up to this point, Poe had not written much poetry. His earliest lines of verse were a couplet labeled "Poetry", presumably written sometime in 1824 in the ledger book of Allan & Ellis, his foster father's mercantile company. The lines read: "Last night with many cares & toils oppress'd / Weary, I laid me on a couch to rest—".[10] The earliest known full-length poem by Poe, "O, Tempora! O, Mores!", is a satirical poem whose authorship is the subject of some dispute.[11] Nevertheless, calling himself "irrecoverably a poet",[12] he had been working on a few longer poems at the University of Virginia,[6] whose manuscripts he brought with him to Boston.[13]
Publication history
Back cover with an advertisement for printer Calvin F. S. Thomas
Sometime in the spring of 1827, Poe turned over his manuscripts to an 18-year-old printer named Calvin F. S. Thomas, whose family may have been known by Poe's birth parents.[13] Thomas had previously only printed labels, flyers, and other small jobs.[14] Poe used his own money to pay for the publication of his poems as the 40-page collection Tamerlane and Other Poems,[6] the only known book printed by Thomas.[15] The collection was pamphlet-sized, 6.75 by 4.5 inches.[16] Poe was 18 years old when the collection was released in July 1827 and only 50 copies were printed.[13] The total production number is the subject of dispute; various scholars believe the number was slightly lower (only 20 copies) or substantially higher (as many as 200).[17]
Tamerlane and Other Poems was published anonymously with the credit granted to "a Bostonian".[13] His name, typically listed as "Edgar A. Poe", was not published with his work until his second collection, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems in late 1829.[18] Poe may have chosen not to give his name so that his foster father, John Allan, would not know where he was;[19] moreover, his choice to embrace his Bostonian heritage may have been an attempt to distance himself from the Allan family in Richmond.[20] Boston was, at the time, a center for publishing and the literary world.[6] By the time the book was released, Poe was already in the Army.[21]
Poe introduced the collection with an apologetic notice admitting the low quality of his poems. He said they were not intended ever to be published and "why they are now published concerns no one" but the author.[22] He claimed, however, that the majority of the poems were written between 1820 and 1821, "when the author had not completed his fourteenth year"[23] though this is assumed to be an exaggeration. Poe used the low circulation of this collection to attract readers later in his career, suggesting the 1827 poetry book had been "suppressed through circumstances of a private nature".[24] That second collection, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems, included revised versions of five of the nine poems from Tamerlane and Other Poems.[25]
Distribution of Tamerlane and Other Poems was so light that Rufus Wilmot Griswold in 1850 claimed it had never existed, noting that none had been found. The first known copy turned up in 1859 with a second found in 1874.[14] A type facsimile of a copy held by the British Museum, edited and introduced by Richard Herne Shepherd, was published as a limited edition in 1884.[26] Another copy of Tamerlane and Other Poems was published in a 1941 facsimile by Thomas Ollive Mabbott,[10][27] who provided the introduction; his correction and additions to this are found in a subsequent publication.[28] A further copy turned up in a bin in a New Hampshire antiques barn in 1988, found by a Massachusetts man rummaging around.[29]
Themes
Many of the poems in Tamerlane and Other Poems were inspired by Lord Byron. A character in the title poem was named Ada after Byron's daughter Ada Lovelace.
The poems, many of which had a theme of youth, were inspired in part by the works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.[30] The largest inspiration on Poe, however, came from the work of Lord Byron;[31] the character of the title poem "Tamerlane" has a daughter named "Ada", named after Byron's own daughter Ada Lovelace.[21] Poe admired Byron both for his poetry and for his rebellious personality. John Allan blamed Poe's interest in Byron for his licentiousness.[32] Some biographers suggest that Poe's wandering to Boston and joining the Army represent a need to live like an outcast inspired by Byron.[33]
The title poem, "Tamerlane", depicts a dying conqueror who regrets leaving his childhood sweetheart and his home to pursue his ambitions.[34] In its original form, "Tamerlane", based on the historical Timur, was 406 lines.[14] The choice of an eastern character was unusual for a westerner at the time, though Byron, François-René de Chateaubriand, Thomas Moore and others had written other Orientalist works.[35] Autobiographical overtones suggest Poe based the poem on the loss of his own early love, Sarah Elmira Royster,[22] or of his birth mother Eliza Poe.[36] The poem may also mirror Poe's relationship with his foster father John Allan; similar to Poe, Tamerlane is of uncertain parentage, with a "feigned name".[23]
The "other poems", which Poe admitted "perhaps savour too much of egotism; but they were written by one too young to have any knowledge of the world but from his own breast".[22] These poems present the poet as solitary figure who was faced some unnamed transforming childhood event.[37] Poe adopted some of the common themes of the day, including imagery of heavenly bliss and angelic beauty. He steps away from the typical use of didacticism of the time and instead focuses on psychological reverie and symbolist aesthetics,[38] beginning his lifelong poetic refusal to write for the masses.[35] Poe would continue to revisit themes of death, beauty, love, and pride in his later works.[39] He would later rewrite one poem, "Imitation", as "A Dream Within a Dream" and use images from "Evening Star" in "Ulalume".[40]
Critical reception
Tamerlane and Other Poems was virtually ignored and received no significant critical attention upon its publication.[41] The only public notice of it was a mention of the title in a couple lists of recent books:[42] The United States Review and Literary Gazette listed it in August and the North American Review listed it in October 1827.[43] Samuel Kettell listed Tamerlane and Other Poems in his "Catalogue of American Poetry" section of his three-volume anthology Specimens of American Poetry in 1829.[44] Literary historian Joel Porte suggests the American reading public during this period was more interested in fiction than poetry.[45] Despite its lack of attention, the publication of Tamerlane and Other Poems gave a young Poe the confidence to continue writing.[31]
After Poe became more popular with "The Raven", a reviewer who saw parts of Tamerlane and Other Poems commented, "'Poems written during youth' no matter by whom written, are best preserved for the eye of the writer".[46] Modern scholar Joseph Wood Krutch said the collection "save for a few poems, [was] distinctly prentice work".[30] Poe biographer Arthur Hobson Quinn wrote: "The perfection which marked Poe's great lyrics was, of course, not yet present. But the promise was there."[47] Quinn also credits Poe for publishing a collection of poetry before slightly older contemporaries who would become popular poets, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.[48] Scholar Harry Lee Poe, a distant relative of Poe, wrote in 2008 that the collection did not include great poetry. However, he added, "it was the trumpet blast announcing that a new poet had stepped upon the stage".[49]
It is believed only a dozen copies of the original printing of Tamerlane and Other Poems remain, making it one of the rarest of first editions in American literature.[14][50] Ironically, the value of one copy today is more money than Poe ever made in his lifetime.[51] Its rarity was recognized in 1925, when the Saturday Evening Post ran an article titled "Have You A Tamerlane in Your Attic"?[52] After the article ran, a woman in Worcester, Massachusetts named Ada S. Dodd searched and found a copy, prompting others to search as well.[53] Today, most of the surviving copies are owned by libraries and museums. Two copies, for example, were purchased by The Huntington Library in New York in 1915.[54] One copy is on display as part of the collection at the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia.[50] Though copies do not circulate often, they command high prices when they do. One sold at auction for $125,000[55] and, later, another sold for $198,000.[17] In December 2009, a copy from the William E. Self collection sold at Christie's, New York for $662,500, a record price paid for a work of American literature.[56][57]
Content
The work was originally published without a table of contents; later editions and commentary use the titles or first lines to identify the poems. Much of the content was reworked, occasionally retitled, by Poe for later collections.[26]
↑ Hubbell, Jay B. "'O, Tempora! O, Mores!' A Juvenile Poem by Edgar Allan Poe", Studies in the Humanities. University of Colorado Studies. Series B, vol. 2, no. 4: 314–321.
↑ Peeples, Scott. Edgar Allan Poe Revisited. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1998: 28. ISBN0-8057-4572-6
↑ Cornelius, Kay. "Biography of Edgar Allan Poe" in Bloom's BioCritiques: Edgar Allan Poe, Harold Bloom, ed. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2002: 12. ISBN0-7910-6173-6
↑ Mabbott, Thomas Ollive, Tamerlane and Other Poems, New York: The Facsimile Text Society by Columbia University Press, 1941
↑ Mabbott, Thomas Ollive, “Digressions, C: Supplementary Notes on Tamerlane, 1827,” The Raven and Other Poems, New York: The Facsimile Text Society by Columbia University Press, 1942, pp. xxvi-xxvii. cited at eapoe.org
↑ Bartlett, Allison Hoover. The Man Who Loved Books Too Much. Riverhead Books, 2009: 24. ISBN978-1594484810
1 2 Erkkila, Betsy. "The Poetics of Whiteness: Poe and the Racial Imaginary" in Romancing the Shadow: Poe and Race, J. Gerald Kennedy & Liliane Weissberg, eds. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001: 45. ISBN0-19-513711-6
↑ Hoffman, Daniel. Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972: 27. ISBN0-8071-2321-8
↑ Reynolds, David S. Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988: 44. ISBN0-674-06565-4
Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, poet, author, editor, and literary critic who is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism and Gothic fiction in the United States, and of American literature. Poe was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story, and is considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre, as well as a significant contributor to the emerging genre of science fiction. He is the first well-known American writer to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.
"The Gold-Bug" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe published in 1843. The plot follows William Legrand, who becomes fixated on an unusual gold-colored bug he has discovered. His servant Jupiter fears that Legrand is going insane and goes to Legrand's friend, an unnamed narrator, who agrees to visit his old friend. Legrand pulls the other two into an adventure after deciphering a secret message that will lead to a buried treasure.
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, written in 1838, is the only complete novel by American writer Edgar Allan Poe. The work relates the tale of the young Arthur Gordon Pym, who stows away aboard a whaling ship called the Grampus. Various adventures and misadventures befall Pym, including shipwreck, mutiny, and cannibalism, before he is saved by the crew of the Jane Guy. Aboard this vessel, Pym and a sailor named Dirk Peters continue their adventures farther south. Docking on land, they encounter hostile, black-skinned natives before escaping back to the ocean. The novel ends abruptly as Pym and Peters continue toward the South Pole.
Frances Sargent Osgood was an American poet and one of the most popular women writers during her time. Nicknamed "Fanny", she was also famous for her exchange of romantic poems with Edgar Allan Poe.
Rufus Wilmot Griswold was an American anthologist, editor, poet, and critic. Born in Vermont, Griswold left home when he was 15 years old. He worked as a journalist, editor, and critic in Philadelphia, New York City, and elsewhere. He built a strong literary reputation, in part due to his 1842 collection The Poets and Poetry of America. This anthology, the most comprehensive of its time, included what he deemed the best examples of American poetry. He produced revised versions and similar anthologies for the remainder of his life, although many of the poets he promoted have since faded into obscurity. Many writers hoped to have their work included in one of these editions, although they commented harshly on Griswold's abrasive character. Griswold was married three times: his first wife died young, his second marriage ended in a public and controversial divorce, and his third wife left him after the previous divorce was almost repealed.
"Al Aaraaf" is an early poem by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1829. It tells of the afterlife in a place called Al Aaraaf, inspired by A'raf as described in the Quran. At 422 lines, it is Poe's longest poem.
"The Poetic Principle" is an essay by Edgar Allan Poe, written near the end of his life and published posthumously in 1850, the year after his death. It is a work of literary criticism, in which Poe presents his literary theory. It is based on a series of lectures Poe had given late in his lifetime.
Sarah Elmira Royster Shelton was an adolescent sweetheart of Edgar Allan Poe who became engaged to him shortly before his death in 1849.
"MS. Found in a Bottle" is an 1833 short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe. The plot follows an unnamed narrator at sea who finds himself in a series of harrowing circumstances. As he nears his own disastrous death while his ship drives ever southward, he writes an "MS.", or manuscript, telling of his adventures which he casts into the sea. Some critics believe the story was meant as a satire of typical sea tales.
"Metzengerstein: A Tale in Imitation of the German" is a short story by American writer and poet Edgar Allan Poe, his first to see print. It was first published in the pages of Philadelphia's Saturday Courier magazine, in 1832. The story follows the young Frederick, the last of the Metzengerstein family, who carries on a long-standing feud with the Berlifitzing family. Suspected of causing a fire that kills the Berlifitzing family patriarch, Frederick becomes intrigued with a previously unnoticed and untamed horse. Metzengerstein is punished for his cruelty when his own home catches fire and the horse carries him into the flame. Part of a Latin hexameter by Martin Luther serves as the story's epigraph: Pestis eram vivus—moriens tua mors ero.
Graham's Magazine was a nineteenth-century periodical based in Philadelphia established by George Rex Graham and published from 1840 to 1858. It was alternatively referred to as Graham's Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine, Graham's Magazine of Literature and Art, Graham's American Monthly Magazine of Literature and Art, and Graham's Illustrated Magazine of Literature, Romance, Art, and Fashion.
The Stylus, originally intended to be named The Penn, was a would-be periodical owned and edited by Edgar Allan Poe. It had long been a dream of Poe to establish an American journal with very high standards in order to elevate the literature of the time. Despite attempts at signing up subscribers and finding financial backers and contributors, the journal never came to be.
Politian (1835) is the only play known to have been written by Edgar Allan Poe, composed in 1835, but never completed.
The Broadway Journal was a short-lived New York City-based newspaper founded by Charles Frederick Briggs and John Bisco in 1844 and was published from January 1845 to January 1846. In its first year, the publication was bought by Edgar Allan Poe, becoming the only periodical he ever owned, though it failed after only a few months under his leadership.
"Tamerlane" is a poem by Edgar Allan Poe that follows a fictionalized accounting of the life of a Turco-Mongol conqueror historically known as Tamerlane. The poem was first published in the 1827 collection Tamerlane and Other Poems. That collection, with only 50 copies printed, was not credited with the author's real name but by "A Bostonian". The poem's original version was 403 lines but trimmed down to 223 lines for its inclusion in Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems.
"Eulalie", or "Eulalie — A Song", is a poem by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in the July 1845 issue of The American Review and reprinted shortly thereafter in the August 9, 1845 issue of the Broadway Journal.
This article lists all known poems by American author and critic Edgar Allan Poe, listed alphabetically with the date of their authorship in parentheses.
William Henry Leonard Poe, often referred to as Henry Poe, was an American sailor, amateur poet and the older brother of Edgar Allan Poe and Rosalie Poe.
The Poets and Poetry of America was a popular anthology of American poetry collected by American literary critic and editor Rufus Wilmot Griswold. It was first published in 1842 and went into several editions throughout the 19th century.
The works of American author Edgar Allan Poe include many poems, short stories, and one novel. His fiction spans multiple genres, including horror fiction, adventure, science fiction, and detective fiction, a genre he is credited with inventing. These works are generally considered part of the Dark romanticism movement, a literary reaction to Transcendentalism. Poe's writing reflects his literary theories: he disagreed with didacticism and allegory. Meaning in literature, he said in his criticism, should be an undercurrent just beneath the surface; works whose meanings are too obvious cease to be art. Poe pursued originality in his works, and disliked proverbs. He often included elements of popular pseudosciences such as phrenology and physiognomy. His most recurring themes deal with questions of death, including its physical signs, the effects of decomposition, concerns of premature burial, the reanimation of the dead, and mourning. Though known as a masterly practitioner of Gothic fiction, Poe did not invent the genre; he was following a long-standing popular tradition.
References
Bittner, William. Poe: A Biography. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1962.
Bloomfield, Shelly Costa. The Everything Guide to Edgar Allan Poe: The Life, Times, and Work of a Tormented Genius. New York: Adams Media, 2008. ISBN978-1-59869-527-4
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