Oxford Bibliographies by Richard Kopley (review)

In 1974, Dameron and Cauthen, in their Edgar Allan Poe: A Bibliography of Criticism (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press) listed over 2,700 items written in English about Edgar Allan Poe and published during the range of 1827–1967. Even at that time, now nearly four decades ago, the list was not complete and scholars have been very busy publishing new items year after year. How can a student not look at such a ponderous mass of scholarship, arguably of highly variable quality and relevance, and feel anything other than overwhelmed? Where can one possibly start? How does one begin to wade through material that could easily consume a lifetime? Essentially attempting to address this issue, Richard Kopley has contributed a chapter on Edgar Allan Poe for the Oxford Bibliographies, part of an extensive online resource produced by the Oxford University Press. The general statement for the website defines its purpose as offering “exclusive, authoritative research guides. Combining the best features of an annotated bibliography and a high-level encyclopedia, this cutting-edge resource guides researchers to the best available scholarship across a wide variety of subjects.” The idea, of course, is not entirely revolutionary. Research guides of a similar character have been created in various forms and formats, some with a more targeted focus on a given aspect of Poe’s writings and others with a broader reach of Poe and his works as a general subject. Kopley’s current effort falls toward the more comprehensive end of this curve, and he has generally met the difficult task at hand with ample skill, knowledge, and judgment.

The research guide for Poe begins with a one-paragraph introduction, summarizing significant points in Poe’s life, with such essential details as birth, death, marriage, and the dates of major publications, sprinkled with a few editorial insights. It is followed by fifteen main sections (Primary Texts, Reference Works, Biographies, Influence, etc.), some of which are divided into subsections (General Editions, Specific Editions, Teaching Editions, etc.). These sections primarily feature lists of scholarly studies and collections, each entry including a short annotation, with options to save, export, or e-mail the citation. (Saving a citation requires a “My OBO” account. Exporting is supported to EndNote, Reference Manager, ProCite, RefWorks, and Zotero.) A “find this resource” option opens a search for the selected entry using WorldCat.org. The total list includes 160 unique items, a few of which are cross-referenced across multiple subsections. (Only Kopley’s own Edgar Allan Poe and the Dupin Mysteries gets two full entries, once under “Teaching Editions” and again under the “Tales” subsection of “Criticism,” no doubt an oversight.)

The titles of most entries are well-known to active Poe scholars, as one should expect, but the target audience of the bibliography is presumably students and scholars with less exposure to the subject. The arrangement and limited selection of such material necessarily requires compromises, and sometimes the natural bias of the compiler affects choices and annotations. The biographies of Poe written by Hervey Allen (Israfel, 1934), Arthur Hobson Quinn (Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography, 1941), and Kevin Hayes (Edgar Allan Poe, 2009) are listed under the section called “General Overview,” but omitted entirely from the section of “Biographies.” (One might ask why these works are classified primarily as general overviews rather than as biographies. The distinction may be their mix of biographical fact and commentary on Poe’s writings, but the statement provided that these are “full-length studies” seems insufficient to define and differentiate the category.) The biography by Kenneth Silverman (Edgar Allan Poe: Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance, 1991) is also listed under “General Overview,” but at least it gets an appropriate cross-reference note under “Biographies.” A little more attention to such categorization and cross-referencing may be warranted, especially as a hasty student may focus on one portion of the bibliography without reading over the whole thing. One particularly evident bias is...