Stevenson on Poe: Unpublished Annotations of Numerous Poe Texts and a Stevenson Letter

Stevenson on Poe: Unpublished Annotations of Numerous Poe Texts and a Stevenson Letter Bubton R. Pollin Professor Emeritus, CUNY J. A. Greenwood Ph.D., Harvard University A GOODLY QUANTITY of manuscript writing by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) concerning Edgar Allan Poe is held by a major New York City library, unstudied, untranscribed, and virtually unmentioned by scholars. This neglect is remarkable since the material throws considerable light on Stevenson's approach to book reviewing, on his own first thoughtful study of significant aspects of Poe's texts which influenced his own fiction, and on his views of responsible authorship. All of it, save one letter, is inscribed by Stevenson himself, and the background circumstances are neither obscure nor ambiguous. At that time, almost at the beginning of his authorial career, Stevenson was involved in a review of John H. Ingram's edition of Poe's Works (Edinburgh : A. & C. Black, November 1874-February 1875; four volumes, issued one each month). Ingram had become the major defender in Victorian England of the influential but much maligned genius, Poe, who had been libeled and misrepresented by his own editor Rufus Griswold in the 1850-56 fourvolume Works. Ingram expected his own four-volumes to correct, augment , and replace Griswold's edition, as a new definitive, "standard" set. Stevenson apparently planned his review in two parts, to judge from his letter to Ingram and his marginal notations in the volumes, but only the first part reached print in the widely circulated, important London weekly the Academy (2 January 2 1875, 7:1-2. For the review see Conclusion below). 317 ELT 37:3 1994 Ingram's letter responding to this critique cannot be found, but it is clearly indicated in a journal type of letter to Stevenson's dear friend Mrs. Sitwell that he wrote from Edinburgh, dated only January 1875, Monday (probably January 11, 18, or 25). The relevant portion is this: Wed.—Yesterday I wasn't well and to-night I have been ever so busy. There came a note from the Academy, sent by John H. Ingram, the editor of the edition of Poe's works I have been reviewing, challenging me to find any more faults. I have found nearly sixty; so I may be happy; but that makes me none the less sleepy; so I must go to bed.i As will be seen in his marginal notations, the enumeration is an important part of the epistolary exchanges and of Stevenson's marginalia . His inferred first and probably brief response to Ingram's letter cannot be found, nor can Ingram's first and also second letter to RLS, which can be deduced from a letter of particulars. This response to John H. Ingram is an unedited autograph copy by Stevenson (or, unlikely, a returned original letter), which was enclosed in or attached perhaps by Stevenson himself to his four-volume set; it reached the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library (in 1940), where it was detached from the books and separately catalogued without reference to its immediate provenance (although the set itself has a catalogue note on the original association of both). It is given an imputed date of "1874?", clearly an error for late January 1875—more probably February.2 The letter follows : [Stevenson, R. L. ALS to John H. Ingram 2 leaves Cat. # 172035B]3 Edinburgh 17 Heriot Row 1874? [NYPL] Dear Sir, I am glad you have come to the determination notified in your letter; glad, also, to perceive by its tone that you have forgiven me—the [scored over to delete] not my criticism, for that I am sure would never have offended—but that certain flippancy in the way of setting it[—]faults which justly enough, I admit, have been distasteful to you. Let me add a word: after all that is past, I would not be in such a hurry to consider and reject any criticisms, as you have been in more than one instance.* I am not infallible of course, and the list was prepared in a hurry, as I stupidly enough imagined it would be in time for that week's issue.5 Still, although not at all...