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SELECTIONS FROM POE

Edited with Biographical and Critical Introduction and Notes

BY

J. MONTGOMERY GAMBRILL

Head of the Department of History and Civics
Baltimore Polytechnic Institute

INSCRIBED TO THE POE AND LOWELL LITERARY SOCIETIES OF THE
BALTIMORE POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE

[Illustration: EDGAR ALLAN POE. After an engraving by Cole]



PREFACE

Edgar Allan Poe has been the subject of so much controversy that he is
the one American writer whom high-school pupils (not to mention
teachers) are likely to approach with ready-made prejudices. It is
impossible to treat such a subject in quite the ordinary
matter-of-course way. Furthermore, his writings are so highly
subjective, and so intimately connected with his strongly held
critical theories, as to need somewhat careful and extended study.
These facts make it very difficult to treat either the man or his art
as simply as is desirable in a secondary text-book.  Consequently the
Introduction is longer and less simple than the editor would desire
for the usual text. It is believed, however, that the teacher can take
up this Introduction with the pupil in such a way as to make it
helpful, significant, and interesting.

The text of the following poems and tales is that of the
Stedman-Woodberry edition (described in the Bibliography, p. xxx), and
the selections are reprinted by permission of the publishers, Duffield
& Company; this text is followed exactly except for a very few changes
in punctuation, not more than five or six in all. My obligations to
other works are too numerous to mention; all the publications included
in the Bibliography, besides a number of others, have been examined,
but I especially desire to acknowledge the courtesy of Dr. Henry
Barton Jacobs of Baltimore, who sent me from Paris a copy of Émile
Lauvrière's interesting and important study, "Edgar Poe: Sa vie et son
oeuvre; étude de psychologie pathologique."  To my wife I am indebted
for valuable assistance in the tedious work of reading proofs and
verifying the text.



CONTENTS

  PREFACE

  INTRODUCTION

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  POEMS
    SONG
    SPIRITS OF THE DEAD
    TO ----
    ROMANCE
    TO THE RIVER
    TO SCIENCE
    TO HELEN
    ISRAFEL
    THE CITY IN THE SEA
    THE SLEEPER
    LENORE
    THE VALLEY OF UNREST
    THE COLISEUM
    HYMN
    TO ONE IN PARADISE
    TO F----
    TO F----S S. O----D
    TO ZANTE
    BRIDAL BALLAD
    SILENCE
    THE CONQUEROR WORM
    DREAM-LAND
    THE RAVEN
    EULALIE
    TO M.L. S----
    ULALUME
    TO ---- ----
    AN ENIGMA
    TO HELEN
    A VALENTINE
    FOR ANNIE
    THE BELLS
    ANNABEL LEE
    TO MY MOTHER
    ELDORADO
    THE HAUNTED PALACE

  TALES
    THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER
    WILLIAM WILSON
    A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTRÖM
    THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH
    THE GOLD-BUG
    THE PURLOINED LETTER

  NOTES



INTRODUCTION

EDGAR ALLAN POE: HIS LIFE, CHARACTER, AND ART


Edgar Allan Poe is in many respects the most fascinating figure in
American literature. His life, touched by the extremes of fortune, was
on the whole more unhappy than that of any other of our prominent men
of letters. His character was strangely complex, and was the subject
of misunderstanding during his life and of heated dispute after his
death; his writings were long neglected or disparaged at home, while
accepted abroad as our greatest literary achievement. Now, after more
than half a century has elapsed since his death, careful biographers
have furnished a tolerably full account of the real facts about his
life; a fairly accurate idea of his character is winning general
acceptance; and the name of Edgar Allan Poe has been conceded a place
among the two or three greatest in our literature.


LIFE AND CHARACTER

In December, 1811, a well-known actress of the time died in Richmond,
leaving destitute three little children, the eldest but four years of
age. This mother, who was Elizabeth (Arnold) Poe, daughter of an
English actress, had suffered from ill health for several years and
had long found the struggle for existence difficult. Her husband,
David Poe, probably died before her; he was a son of General David
Poe, a Revolutionary veteran of Baltimore, and had left his home and
law books for the stage several years before his marriage. The second
of the three children, born January 19, 1809, in Boston, where his
parents happened to be playing at the time, was Edgar Poe, the future
poet and story-writer. The little Edgar was adopted by the wife of
Mr. John Allan, a well-to-do Scotch merchant of the city, who later
became wealthy, and the boy was thereafter known as Edgar Allan
Poe. He was a beautiful and precocious child, who at six years of age
could read, draw, dance, and declaim the best poetry with fine effect
and appreciation; report says, also, that he had been taught to stand
on a chair and pledge Mr. Allan's guests in a glass of wine with
"roguish grace."

In 1815 Mr. Allan went to England, where he remained five years. Edgar
was placed in an old English school in the suburbs of London, among
historic, literary, and antiquarian associations, and possibly was
taken to the Continent by his foster parents at vacation seasons. The
English residence and the sea voyages left deep impressions on the
boy's sensitive nature. Returning to Richmond, he was prepared in good
schools for the University of Virginia, which he entered at the age of
seventeen, pursuing studies in ancient and modern languages and
literatures. During this youthful period he was already developing a
striking and peculiar personality. He was brilliant, if not
industrious, as a student, leaving the University with highest honors
in Latin and French; he was quick and nervous in his movements and
greatly excelled in athletics, especially in swimming; in character,
he was reserved, solitary, sensitive, and given to lonely reverie.
Some of his aristocratic playmates remembered to his discredit that he
was the child of strolling players, and their attitude helped to add a
strain of defiance to an already intensely proud nature. Though kindly
treated by his foster parents, this strange boy longed for an
understanding sympathy that was not his. Once he thought he had found
it in Mrs. Jane Stannard, mother of a schoolmate; but the new friend
soon died, and for months the grief-stricken boy, it is said, haunted
the lonely grave at night and brooded over his loss and the mystery of
death--a not very wholesome experience for a lonely and melancholy lad
of fifteen years.

At the University he drank wine, though not intemperately, and played
cards a great deal, the end of the term finding him with gambling
debts of twenty-five hundred dollars. These habits were common at the
time, and Edgar did not incur any censure from the faculty; but
Mr. Allan declined to honor the gambling debt, removed Edgar, and
placed him in his own counting room. Such a life was too dull for the
high-spirited, poetic youth, and he promptly left his home.

Going to Boston, he published a thin volume of boyish verse,
"Tamerlane, and Other Poems," but realizing nothing financially,[1] he
enlisted in the United States Army as Edgar A. Perry. After two years
of faithful and efficient service, he procured through Mr. Allan (who
was temporarily reconciled to him) an appointment to the West Point
Military Academy, entering in July, 1830. In the meantime, he had
published in Baltimore a second small volume of poems. Fellow-students
have described him as having a "worn, weary, discontented look";
usually kindly and courteous, but shy, reserved, and exceedingly
sensitive; an extraordinary reader, but noted for carping criticism.
Although a good student, he seemed galled beyond endurance by the
monotonous routine of military duties, which he deliberately neglected
and thus procured his dismissal from the Academy. He left, alone and
penniless, in March, 1831.

[Footnote 1: In November, 1900, a single copy of this little volume
sold in New York for $2550.]

Going to New York, Poe brought out another little volume of poems
showing great improvement; then he went to Baltimore, and after a
precarious struggle of a year or two, turned to prose, and, while in
great poverty, won a prize of one hundred dollars from the Baltimore
_Saturday Visitor_ for his story, "The Manuscript Found in a
Bottle." Through John P. Kennedy[1], one of the judges whose
friendship the poverty-stricken author gained, he procured a good deal
of hack work, and finally an editorial position on the _Southern
Literary Messenger_, of Richmond. The salary was fair, and better
was in sight; yet Poe was melancholy, dissatisfied, and miserable. He
wrote a pitiable letter to Mr. Kennedy, asking to be convinced "that
it is at all necessary to live."

[Footnote 1: A well-known Marylander, author of "Horse-Shoe Robinson,"
"Swallow Barn," "Rob of the Bowl," and other popular novels of the
day, and later Secretary of the Navy.]

For several years he had been making his home with an aunt, Mrs.
Clemm, and her daughter, Virginia, a girl beautiful in character and
person, but penniless and probably already a victim of the consumption
that was eventually to cause her death. In 1836, when she was only
fourteen years old, Poe married his cousin, to whom he was
passionately attached. His devotion to her lasted through life, and
the tenderest affection existed between him and Mrs. Clemm, who was
all a mother could have been to him; so that the home life was always
beautiful in spirit, however poor in material comfort.

In January, 1837, his connection with the _Messenger_ was
severed, probably because of his occasional lapses from sobriety; but
his unfortunate temperament and