"NO LOVER OF POE… WILL ACCOUNT THE ARNHEIM EDITION SUPERFLUOUS": POE'S WORKS, BEAUTIFULLY ILLUSTRATED WITH 100 PLATES

POE, Edgar Allan. The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Edited and Chronologically Arranged on the Basis of the Standard Text, with Certain Additional Material. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, The Knickerbocker Press, (1902). Ten volumes. Octavo, publisher's half Art Nouveau vellum gilt, gray paper-covered boards with gilt-stamped raven medallion on front boards, top edges gilt, uncut. $4500.

Limited "Book-Lover's Arnheim" edition of Poe's stories, poems and essays, number 332 of 500 sets, with 100 beautiful illustrations on Japan vellum paper—including 73 after paintings by Frederick Simpson Coburn—and lovely woodcut initials, head- and tailpieces throughout.

Few authors have shaped the course of literature as did Edgar Allan Poe. "Poe was the founder of the modern detective story… [as well as] the ablest critic of his time in America. In verse he achieved incomparable melodic effects… His influence has been incalculable in both verse and prose on later writers… 'This finest of finest of artists,' Bernard Shaw has called him" (Kunitz & Haycraft, 625). With introduction by Charles Richardson and 100 plates of photogravures with printed tissue guards, including 25 portraits of figures discussed in Poe's criticism, 2 views of his residences and 73 plates illustrating the most dramatic moments in Poe's poems and tales, after paintings by Canadian artist Frederick Simpson Coburn, later renowned for his landscapes. The New York Times praised this edition at its publication: "Handsomer books than these it has never been our pleasure to handle… One feels that no lover of Poe, no student of American literature, no collector will account the Arnheim edition superfluous." This is the first collected edition to include "Notes on English Verse" (Vol. I, pp. 267-286) and notes on Hood in "Marginalia" (Vol. IX, pp. 316-320), with the first American appearance of "Old English Poetry" (Vol. VII, pp. 110-117). BAL 16171.

A beautiful set in unusually fine condition.