82. The Raven | And | Other Poems. | By | Edgar A. Poe. | New York: | Wiley And Putnam, 161 Broadway. | 1845.
The poem first appeared in print in the columns of the New York Evening Mirror for January 29, 1845, where N. P. Willis, its editor, says in a note: "We are permitted to copy, (in advance of publication,) from the second number of the American Review, the following remarkable poem by Edgar Poe." Willis issued the poem again in the weekly edition of the Mirror, dated February 8, and Charles F. Briggs, with whom Poe afterward became associated, also published it in the Broadway Journal of the same date, crediting it to "Edgar A. Poe." Both of these weeklies seem to have appeared before the American Review came out. We are not told the reason for Mr. George H. Colton's editorial courtesy in permitting this advance publication when the second, or February number of his paper, The American Review: A Whig Journal Of Politics, Literature, Art And Science, was so soon to appear. It is a curious circumstance that Willis and Briggs gave the author's name freely, while Colton's issue, as originally intended, appeared with the pseudonym of "—— Quarles."
The poem was an immense success, and was copied far and wide in all the newspapers of the country. Writing to F. W. Thomas, May 4, Poe says:
"'The Raven' has had a great run, Thomas—but I wrote it for the express purpose of running—just as I did the 'Gold Bug,' you know. The bird beat the bug, though, all hollow."
This popularity was the poet's greatest reward, for we learn that the actual money remuneration was only ten dollars. Poe makes us think of the early writers, like Bacon and Browne, whom we have seen take to printing their books to save them from the errors of the unlicensed publisher. In a preface to this volume he writes:
"These trifles are collected and republished chiefly with a view to their redemption from the many improvements to which they have been subjected while going at random 'the rounds of the press.' If what I have written is to circulate at all, I am naturally anxious that it should circulate as I wrote it...."
From the original straw-colored paper covers in which it appeared, about December, we learn that the book was issued as one of a series, Wiley And Putnam's Library Of American Books. No. VIII., and that its price was the unusual sum of thirty-one cents. Among the other volumes, its companions in the set, were Journal of an African Cruiser, edited by Nathaniel Hawthorne; Tales of Edgar A. Poe; Letters from Italy, by J. T. Headley; The Wigwam and the Cabin, by W. Gilmore Simms; and Big Abel, by Cornelius Mathews.
Duodecimo.
Collation: 4 ll., 91 pp.