Books

New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1845. First edition in book form of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” the single most famous American poem of the nineteenth century, first published earlier that year in the New York Evening Mirror (under Poe’s own name) and The American Review (under a pseudonym). Partly inspired by the early lyrics of Elizabeth Barrett (later Browning), to whom he dedicated this volume of poems, Poe composed “The Raven” in trochaic octometer, with a deranged musicality all his own. The elements are familiar even to those who don’t read poetry: the “midnight dreary,” the silk-curtained chamber, the raven perched upon the bust of Athena, the relentless refrain that drives the narrator mad. “‘Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! / Leave my loneliness unbroken! – quit the bust above my door! / Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!’ / Quoth the Raven, ‘Nevermore.’” Even before…

A collection of poems by Edgar Allan Poe, the centerpiece of which is the well-known poem 'The Raven', a dark and melancholic narrative that captures Poe's mastery in producing unsettling atmospheres and rhythms.