"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, 20th-century three-quarter blue morocco, elaborately gilt-decorated spines, raised bands, top edges gilt. $6200.

Limited "Booklover's Arnheim edition" of Poe's stories, poems and essays, numbered copy 482 of 500 sets, with 100 beautiful illustrations—including 73 after paintings by Frederick Simpson Coburn—and lovely woodcut initials, head- and tailpieces throughout, handsomely bound.

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). 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). 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. "Regarding the great difficulty of illustrating Poe's fantasies, we are able to say that the artist has succeeded in imparting a sense both of mystery and vision to many of his pictures. Metzengerstein on his furious horse, a ghastly scene in 'The Mystery of Marie Rogét,' the immured horror in 'The Black Cat,' are macabre without any grotesque exaggeration of figure or lighting" (Athenaeum, Dec. 20, 1902). BAL 16171.

Minor toning to plates, interiors otherwise generally quite nice; spines evenly toned. A handsome set in near-fine condition.