Ingram, Sawyer, and “To Isadore”

TYPes-Their History, Forms, and Use: A Study in Survivals, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, Belknap Press, 1966), 1:21, 22-23]. of “The Raven” are so few and so choice than any addition to the number of them will, we are sure, be eagerly welcomed. For the satisfaction of readers on the point of genuineness , we may give the history of this piece. When Edgar Poe, in 1845, acquired sole possession of the Broadway Journal, he commenced republishing his poems in it, but without any signature. Most of these Dieces have been inTable 1 Layout of Printer’s “Upper Case” H A B C D E F G I K L M N O P Q R S T v w X Y Z J U A printer, when going through this alphabet case in sequence from ‘A’ to ‘Z’ in order to set Joseph Miller’s middle initial in type, therefore would have moved across twenty-four compartments without passing either ‘J’or ‘U.’ As O’Connor points out, Hammond’s reading ignores references to the print,ing trade in “Autography” and thus misses the joke. And as to Miller’s comment about ubiquity, the characters of the Roman alphabet are just as ubiquitous as any group of people can be. Earl M. Herrick Texas A &M University-Kingsville Ingram, Sawyer, and “To Isadore” The earliest letters in the correspondence exchanged by John Henry Ingram and Sarah Helen Whitman refer repeatedly to the poem “To Isadore.” The issue of the London weekly The Mirror dated Saturday, 31 January 1874 [vol. 3, whole no. 66, p. 1821, published that poem over Poe’s name under the title “Original Poem by Edgar Allan Poe.” Like any biographer, Ingram was eager to discover primary material that others had overlooked , but in the present case caution seems to have prevailed. The text accompanying the poem in The Mirror may have been written by The Mirror ’s editor, William Kingston Sawyer [for Sawyer and The Mirror, see my “Righting Wrongs: John Henry Ingram’s First Publication on Poe,” Poe Studies/Dark Romanticism 32 (1999): 41, 44-45] : We have great satisfaction in being able, through the courtesy of a valued contributor, who has made the life and works of America’s most original poet a life-study, to present our readers with a poem which has never appeared in any collection of Poe’s works either in England or in the United States. The poetical works of the author “ eluded in the various collections of his poetical works; but the following, “To Isadore,” appears to have been overlooked by all his many editors, who, indeed, have for the most part contented themselves with what came to hand, without troubling to hunt over the dusty files of old papers , not easily accessible. This poem is thoroughly in Poe’s style, and some of the lines are singularly beautiful . The third stanza is a perfect gem, equal to anything in the collected works. The endings of the third and fifth verses are thoroughly characteristic of the poet’s earlier style. Ingram sent the printed page both to Mrs. Whitman and to A. C. Swinburne. Their replies indicate that he had already sought their advice about the poem’s authorship. Thanking Ingram on 10 March 1874, Swinburne observes that the poem reads “more like the work of a disciple of Poe’s than of his own hand. It has pretty lines, but none which have that peculiar melody scarcely ever wanting to even his crudest juvenile work” [The Swinburne Letters, ed. Cecil Y. Lang (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1959-62), 2:291]. On 16 March 1874, Mrs. Whitman tells Ingram that she feels %ure that Isadore was not Poe’s,” and on 20 March 1874, she recollects “having asked Edgar about Isadore, believing it to have been his.” She continues, “I cannot remember his answer but if he had said that it was his I could never have forgotten it.” More conclusively, she adds, Poe had marked with the letter P all his own poems in two bound volumes of the Broadway Journal issues that he had edited. He had not so marked “To Isadore...