[Rarebooks] fa: [EDGAR ALLAN POE] MISCELANEOUS SELECTIONS AND ORIGINAL PIECES - Baltimore: 1821

[ArCh]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, September 27. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

https://tinyurl.com/y27xkyuc

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


Elizabeth Chase (ed.): Miscellaneous Selections and Original Pieces, in Prose and Verse. Consisting principally of pieces of moral instruction, descriptions of fine scenery, delineations of distinguished characters, &c. [Baltimore:] Published for the editor by E. J. Coale; Richard J. Matchett, printer, 1821. FIRST EDITION. Early/period tree calf, small 8vo (17 cm), 228 pp.

Contains a number of poems that have been attributed (controversially, to say the least) to a young Edgar Allan Poe, including "Monody on the Death of General Joseph Sterett, by a very young Gentleman of Baltimore" and twenty others by the same author, all of which are signed "Edgar." Those who would attribute the verses to Poe suggest that "the age given as 'eighteen' is possibly a fiction to disguise the extreme youth of the poet. Poe at this period was writing verse, though still at school, for it is related that about this time Mr. Allan showed a manuscript of poems written by him to the young ladies of Richmond. Though as yet no evidence has been brought forward to prove conclusively that these poems were the production of Poe, still upon a closer examination of them, and particularly after a comparison of them with the 'Fugitive Pieces' (written in 1821) and published with Tamerlane in 1827, it is difficult to believe otherwise than that they were by the same hand" (James H. Whitty, The Complete Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, 1911).

According to Sabin (v. III, p. 527), the editor, Elizabeth Chase, was sister to Samuel Chase of Maryland, Supreme Court Justice and a signer of the Declaration of Independence — though a different source identifies her as Chase's daughter (A Collection of Valuable Americana Gathered by the late Moses Polock, Esq., the Oldest Bookseller in the United States, Philadelphia, 1904).

In any case, an uncommon title, rarely found outside of institutional libraries. In the catalogue for its sale of Nov. 17, 2016, Pacific Book Auctions observed that only one other copy had appeared at auction in more than a hundred years, "that being the copy inscribed by Chase to Thomas Jefferson." Binding with rubbing and wear, spine cracked and tender but holding; fairly mild browning to the leaves with occasional spotting. Title-page with the signature in pencil of an early owner, who has also added a few faint (erasable) pencil marks and underlinings.