"THIS FINEST OF FINEST OF ARTISTS": RARE FIRST COLLECTED EDITION OF EDGAR ALLAN POE'S WORKS, 1850

POE, Edgar Allan. The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe: with Notices of His Life and Genius. New York: J.S. Redfield, 1850, 1856 (Volume IV). Four volumes. Octavo, mid-20th-century three-quarter teal morocco gilt, raised bands, top edges gilt. $6000.

First collected edition of Poe's complete works, published one year after his death, with steel-engraved portrait of Poe in Volume I. This set includes the separately published third and fourth volumes, which includes the first edition in book form of Poe's The Literati, his essays on contemporary authors (Volume III), and Rufus Griswold's notorious "Memoir of the Author," a smear penned by Poe's ill-chosen executor.

"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). This four-volume set, the first collected edition of Poe's works, includes Poe's tales, poems, literary criticism, and miscellaneous works. This collection was edited by N.P. Willis, James Russell Lowell, and Poe's rather ill-chosen executor Rufus Griswold, and includes in Volume III Griswold's notorious "Memoir of the Author." "For decades after Poe's death his reputation suffered from the smears of the editor Rufus Griswold. Over the years the two men had developed an outwardly respectful relationship, with undercurrents of mutual fear, envy, and loathing. In a scurrilous obituary article and a late memoir of Poe [included here in Volume III], Griswold alleged or implied that his competitor had been expelled from the University of Virginia, had deserted the army, and had tried to seduce John Allan's second wife. Although many of Poe's admirers defended him in print against Griswold, nothing has spoken so convincingly for his importance as has the influence of his works. His detective fiction and his macabre treatment of the uncanny and the disgusting pervade 20th-century popular culture. Among the foundations of modernism is the analytic attitude he brought to literature, his determined separation of the man who suffers and the artist who creates" (ANB).

Publisher Redfield clearly intended to publish only two volumes of Poe's Works, as indicated on the first two title pages, "In Two Volumes." These first two volumes contain the Tales, Poems, and some miscellaneous prose. Volume III, published separately later in 1850, is titled The Literati: Some Honest Opinions about Autorial Merits and Demerits, and collects Poe's essays on contemporary authors, marking the first edition in book form; Volume IV, published in 1856, includes Poe's long story "Narrative of A. Gordon Pym," along with further miscellaneous prose works. Volume I is the second printing, with preliminary matter ending on page xx and no statement "Was published on the First of April" on the last page of advertisements; Volume II is the first printing, with the "r" in "choir" missing in the first line of the third stanza on page 46. Volume III is the second printing state listed by BAL, with "1" signature mark on page 1. BAL 16158, 16159, 16161.

Scattered light foxing and smudging, contents overall clean; spines evenly toned. A handsome set.