Details
POE, Edgar Allan (1809-1849), editor. The Conchologist's First Book: Or, a System of Testaceous Malacology. Philadelphia: for the author, by Haswell, Barrington, and Haswell, 1839.
12o (166 x 109 mm). 12 lithographed plates (some foxing). (Scattered foxing to text.) Original leather-backed pink pictorial boards (some wear to spine and corners, rubbed); later board slipcase. Provenance: Jared P. Kirtland, Cleveland (bookplate).
FIRST EDITION, Heartman and Canny's variant "b" (with uncolored plates). An adaptation of Thomas Brown's The Conchologist's Text-Book (Glasgow, 1833), edited by the financially troubled Poe, which was published shortly after he moved to Philadelphia in 1838. Poe was later accused of plagiarism for this work and in a letter written in February 1847 to George W. Eveleth, Poe states: "I wrote it, in conjunction with Professor Thomas Wyatt, and Professor McMurtrie of Pha--my name being put to the work, as best known and most likely to aid its circulation. I wrote the Preface and Introduction, and translated from Cuvier, the accounts of the animals etc..." (see Ostrom, The Letters of Edgar Allan Poe [New York, 1966], no. 249, p. [343]). BAL 16131; Heartman-Canny, pp. 41-44; Norman 1720.
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FIRST EDITION, Heartman and Canny's variant "b" (with uncolored plates). An adaptation of Thomas Brown's The Conchologist's Text-Book (Glasgow, 1833), edited by the financially troubled Poe, which was published shortly after he moved to Philadelphia in 1838. Poe was later accused of plagiarism for this work and in a letter written in February 1847 to George W. Eveleth, Poe states: "I wrote it, in conjunction with Professor Thomas Wyatt, and Professor McMurtrie of Ph