"LITERATURE TO HIM WAS RELIGION; AND HE, ITS HIGH-PRIEST": POE’S WORKS, HANDSOMELY BOUND
POE, Edgar Allan. The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Edited by John H. Ingram. Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1874-75. Four volumes. Small octavo, early 20th-century three-quarter brown calf, elaborately gilt-decorated spines, raised bands, brown and olive morocco spine labels, marbled endpapers, top edges gilt.
Lovely four-volume edition of Poe's complete works, with steel-engraved frontispiece portrait in Volume I and wood-engraved frontispiece illustration in Volume II, handsomely bound by Riviere & Son.
After his death, Poe's reputation suffered under the willful misrepresentation of his literary executor, critic Rufus Griswold. In an attempt to set the record straight, Englishman "John Henry Ingram published the first significant life of Poe in 1874, which he expanded into two volumes in 1880… Ingram devoted years of his life to corresponding with everyone he could find who had known Poe or who had reliable information about him. Ingram also edited a four-volume edition of Poe's works and wrote nearly 50 articles about him… Ingram's biography… effected a turning point in Poe's reputation" (Meyers, 264). This compilation includes Poe's tales, poems, essays, and criticism, as well as a "memoir" by Poe's friend George Graham, the editor and publisher of Graham's Magazine. Graham noted that "Literature to him [Poe] was religion; and he, its high-priest" (Meyers, 282). Bookplate.
Interiors clean, a few corners and spine head of Volume IV gently rubbed. A very handsome set in near-fine condition.