An Early Unrecorded London Variant of “The Raven”

Abstract

A fter appearing in at least thirteen different American publications from February to May 1845 [Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore, “Edgar Allan Poe–The Raven,” http://eapoe.org/works/info/pp073.htm (accessed 9 June 2010)], “The Raven” crossed the Atlantic, appearing in the 14 June 1845 issue of the Critic of London [148]. It did not emerge again in a publication of that country until early 1846 with the London edition of The Raven and Other Poems (hereinafter RAOP) [Charles F. Heartman and James R. Canny, A Bibliography of First Printings of the Writings of Edgar Allan Poe . . . , rev. ed. (Hattiesburg, MS: Book Farm, 1943), 103; also see Works, 1:359– 64, 578–82]. Shortly thereafter, the London Athenaeum reprinted the poem in its entirety within a generally negative review of RAOP in its 28 February 1846 issue [215–16]. Elizabeth Barrett claimed in an April 1846 letter to Poe that the poem “produced a sensation, a ‘fit horror’ ” [see The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe (New York: AMS Press, 1965), 17:229]. Perhaps she was merely exaggerating the poem’s effect as a polite means of thanking Poe for dedicating RAOP to her, but assuming it did indeed create a “fit horror,” such a public reaction would had to have been the result of reprinting the poem in widely circulated magazines in addition to the limited number of copies of RAOP. Furthermore, the poem would have had to appear in a widely distributed periodical with a target audience of intellectual English ladies to reach the members of Elizabeth Barrett’s social group in sufficient number to cause such a stir. Curiously, then, at the date of her letter, the Critic and the Athenaeum are the only two recorded British periodicals that carried the text of the poem. Because the Critic version had been out for almost a year and the