An Early Unrecorded London Variant of “The Raven”

An Early Unrecorded London Variant of “The Raven” DOUGLAS LIND Your “Raven” has produced a sensation, a “fit horror,” here in England . Some of my friends are taken by the fear of it and some by the music. I hear of persons haunted by the “Nevermore,” and one acquaintance of mine who has the misfortune of possessing a “bust of Pallas” never can bear to look at it in the twilight. —Elizabeth Barrett Barrett to Edgar Allan Poe, April 1846 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 C  2010 Washington State University P O E S T U D I E S , VOL. 43, 2010 85 D O U G L A S L I N D Athenaeum was quite critical of Poe, it seems unlikely that these periodicals alone would have induced the sensation Barrett described. Now a formerly unrecorded London printing in a monthly fashion magazine adds credence to her statements and the notion that the poem was more broadly available than previously believed (particularly to female readers). It also adds several important details to the canon of “The Raven” printings. The poem appeared in its entirety in the 1 May 1846 issue of the World of Fashion: Monthly Magazine of the Courts of London and Paris, Fashions and Literature, Music, Fine Arts, the Opera and Theatres [102–4]. Because of publishers’ practice of distributing periodicals prior to their cover date in order not to seem out-of-date too soon and in order to gain a competitive advantage over other fashion monthlies, this issue was likely available to the public in mid- to late April. To explain how Poe’s “The Raven” found itself in a periodical originally targeted exclusively to women, it is helpful to examine the magazine’s editorial history. The World of Fashion was printed and published by John Browne Bell, son of the prominent printer John Bell, who was known for his successful publication of periodicals, including such fashion magazines as the immensely popular early nineteenth-century La Belle Assemblée. Drawing on his father’s understanding of the industry, Browne Bell effectively shaped the content and target distribution of the World of Fashion. From its inception in 1824 through the early 1840s, the magazine’s editorship was occupied by a “Mrs. Bell,” most likely wife of its proprietor [Alison Adburgham, Women in Print: Writing Women...