Marginalia on “Marginalia”

On page xliv in his edition of The Brevities (Gordian Press, 1985), Burton R. Pollin presents a list of Poe’s autograph edits to printed pages from the November 1844, April 1846, and July 1847 issues of the Democratic Review, some of the changes marked in brown ink and others in pencil. Unfortunately, this useful list contains some errors and omissions. Pollin was probably relying on photocopies that did not fully reproduce the changes in pencil, some of which are very faint. With one notable exception, the most important changes are accurately recorded. It should perhaps be noted that the seventeen “Marginalia” texts presented in Pollin’s edition follow the original printings and do not apply the changes marked on these pages nor mention them in the notes to the relevant entries—with the exception of M 38, in which the changes that Poe made to the footnote are especially significant.The set of pages from the Democratic Review with Poe’s changes may be found in the collection of Daniel Coit Gilman (1831–1908) housed in the Sheridan Libraries (Johns Hopkins University, special collections, Gilman Papers, MS 1, series 1, box 38, folder 16). The precise history of ownership for these pages is not documented. Clearly, they were originally owned by Poe and modified with the apparent intention of reprinting in some form, probably as a separate book that never materialized. How the pages made their way to Gilman is uncertain. They were likely part of the collection of material from Poe’s papers that Maria Clemm, Poe’s aunt and mother-in-law, made available to Rufus Wilmot Griswold to prepare the posthumous edition of The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe (1850–56).Precisely when Poe made these changes is almost impossible to determine. In introducing the variants, Pollin makes no attempt to date Poe’s changes but states confidently, “Of the two sets of changes, the earlier are in ink, the later and fewer—are in pencil” (xliv). This assertion is made without further explanation, but my own examination of the changes suggests that this statement is incorrect. I presume that Pollin makes his claim chiefly based on the series of changes that Poe made to M 38. At first, in that entry, Poe inserts a footnote to update the number of “celestial objects” from ten to eleven, adding that the Astraea had since been discovered. This new footnote was made in ink and is subsequently modified in pencil to show that the number of such objects was then seventeen. Although this sequence of updates would indeed have followed Pollin’s assertion, other changes imply the opposite. Most notably, M 23 is initially marked out with Xs, in pencil, but then marked to be reinstated with the note of “stet” in ink. Consequently, it is likely that Poe made the series of changes at various times, alternating the use of ink or pencil as happened to be most convenient at the moment. The nature of the pages themselves means that the markings must have been made no earlier than the very end of 1844—if we assume that the Democratic Review for November 1844 was available to Poe by the middle of October, as would have been the practice for a well-managed magazine of the era. Similarly, the changes in the second, single page of the April 1846 printing cannot date earlier than the middle of March 1846. Although the pages from the July text accompany the others, there are no changes marked on that installment.The asteroid Astraea was first discovered by Karl Ludwig Hencke on December 8, 1845, a fact indicating that the initial change to the footnote for M 38 was probably made no earlier than the beginning of 1846 and before September 23, 1846, when Neptune was discovered. Poe may be presumed to have been familiar with such astronomical information, which was readily published in the newspapers. The subsequent change to the same footnote, updating the number of objects to seventeen, must have been made in 1849, with the discovery of Neptune being the only new planet. Three additional asteroids were discovered in 1847 (Hebe, Iris, and Flora), another in 1848 (Metis), and a final one on April 12, 1849 (Hygeia). Poe’s number of six asteroids includes the previously mentioned Astraea, and his original count of ten celestial objects includes the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn and the asteroids Ceres, Vesta, Juno, and Pallas. If we presume that Poe did not immediately start out making changes to what had only recently been published, we are still left with the uncomfortably large range of 1845 to 1849. To offer a bit more precision, we might say that the 1849 changes happened as early as April, with the discovery of Hygeia, and as late as the end of June, when Poe left Fordham for his fateful southern tour.It is not clear that Griswold used these marked pages in the preparation of his edition, although it would be a reasonable presumption since Mrs. Clemm was eager for the new edition to be published and does not appear to have been highly selective in what she gave him, with the exception of personal notes and letters. Beyond the introduction, none of the entries present in these pages appears in the selections made by Griswold. That introduction, as printed in 1850, does include the one change Poe marked, a change that is not present in the introduction as it was reprinted in the Southern Literary Messenger of April 1849 (15:217). This change merely replaces “upon” with “on,” a slight alteration that does not, on its own, prove that Griswold used these pages as the same note might have been present in other material Griswold had. Alternatively, such a change may simply have been made editorially, by Griswold or the typesetter. Two other uses of “upon” are allowed to stand, which does at least suggest that Poe’s changes were followed. One can only speculate as to whether or not there were originally more such pages, now lost or perhaps destroyed by Griswold’s typesetters. The nature of the 1850 selections from “Marginalia,” and whether they reflect Poe’s own choices or Griswold’s intercession, has been much debated. (See my article “The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe: Poe’s Legacy and Griswold’s Authority,” The Edgar Allan Poe Review 20, no. 1 [2019]: 1–26.)It is possible that the aforementioned Gilman, who was the first president of Johns Hopkins University and a member of the American Antiquarian Society, made some contact with William McCrillis Griswold (1853–99) in one of these capacities or through mutual connections. William was the estranged son of Rufus Wilmot Griswold and was able to acquire control over the remaining material from his father’s literary estate in 1892, having petitioned the State of New York following the death of his father’s executor, George Henry Moore, on May 5, 1892. When he died in 1857, the elder Griswold mentioned in his will neither his wife, who had gone back to her family in Maine, nor their young son. One can only speculate that Gilman acquired the pages as a friendly purchase or a gift from William, his widow or extended family. As these pages do not bear Poe’s signature and do not relate to any of Poe’s most popular writings, they would have naturally been deemed of lesser value to collectors. On the other hand, to an academic with a broader interest in Poe, these documents would still have value, as they do today.One fairly obvious error in Pollin’s list is that the variant of “idiosyncrasy” noted as being changed to “peculiarity” actually occurs twice in M 18—not in M 19, as stated. In addition, Poe marked “great” to be deleted along with the first of the two uses of “idiosyncrasy.” For M 27, the change given as making “on” into “upon” is actually the reverse, making Poe’s changes in this regard consistent. (He allows some of the “upon” uses to stand unchanged.) For M 15, the note Pollin gives as “used” is actually just “use,” with a stray line that he has misinterpreted as a “d.” My assumption is that Poe, having initially marked out that text, changed his mind and decided to make use of the entry in whatever purpose he was planning.Because Poe’s markings are apparently tentative rather than final, some editorial emendations would be required if they were to be fully implemented. For example, adding “however” to M 29 would seem to need commas before and after the inserted word, which Poe does not indicate. Similarly, in adding “ly” to “deep” in “deep-rooted,” does Poe also mean to remove the hyphen?The most substantive and interesting omission, which Pollin presumably could not see in his copy, was in the installment from April 1846. In M 155, to the phrase “Man offends the Deity” Poe adds a note, in pencil, of “(it is assumed)” so that it would read as “Man (it is assumed) offends the Deity.” Another change in the same entry replaces “conceit makes” with “conceit made.” The penciled notes are clear enough on the original and in a modern scan, but so faint that they would not have been reproduced in photocopies. The implication of “it is assumed” in regard to “offends the Deity” is subject to considerable interpretation. Is Poe making some broader comment about religious uncertainty beyond what the entry itself was already stating? Is he implying that the argument offered for “the voluntary endurance of pain” being connected to “atonement for sin” is itself a dubious assumption? Is he merely adding a humorous note to the observation?The revised forms of these texts are presented on the Poe Society of Baltimore website, with the changes indicated. The URLs for the study texts are, respectively, https://www.eapoe.org/works/cmprs/pmmarc01.htm and https://www.eapoe.org/works/cmprs/pmmarc02.htm.

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