POE, Edgar Allan.

The Raven.

New York: W. Jennings Demorest , c. 1869-1870.

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Out of Stock Item Number: RRB-144195

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“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary": Rare First Separate Edition of Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven

The first separate American edition of Poe's most famous poem, and likely the first separate edition overall, preceding the 1869 Glasgow edition (BAL 16216). Small octavo, original cloth, blue endpapers. Octavo, original colored pictorial wrappers printed in blue and gold. In very good condition. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. Only four copies of this separate Demorest edition have been located in OCLC, at the Huntington, Yale University, Brown University, Emory University, all with their bindings unspecified. Though The Raven is here published separately, another issue has been noted at both the University of Virginia and the Free Library Company of Philadelphia, also published by Demorest, and collectively bound with two other poems. It is highly possible that both the separate edition offered here and the collective edition were published in the same year for two different classes of subscribers to Demorest's Monthly Magazine and Demorest's Monthly Young America. Copies were issued in both cloth and wrappers. Not in BAL or Heartman & Cranny. Rare.

The Raven is a narrative poem by American writer Edgar Allan Poe. First published in January 1845, the poem is often noted for its musicality, stylized language, and supernatural atmosphere. It tells of a talking raven's mysterious visit to a distraught lover, tracing the man's slow fall into madness. The lover, often identified as being a student, is lamenting the loss of his love, Lenore. Sitting on a bust of Pallas, the raven seems to further instigate his distress with its constant repetition of the word "Nevermore". The poem makes use of a number of folk, mythological, religious, and classical references. Biographer Hervey Allen: The most important volume of poetry that had been issued up to that time in America… In this little volume the weary, wayworn wanderer had successfully reached his own native shore in the realm of imagination” (Grolier, 100 American 56). Poe considered “The Raven” to be his finest poem—indeed, he was quoted as saying it was the finest poem ever written.