Nation, January 24, 1918

Review of The Complete Poems of Edgar Allan Poe edited by J. H. Whitty and The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe edited by Killis Campbell

Mr. J. H. Whitty, of Richmond, Va., has brought out a second edition of "The Complete Poems of Edgar Allan Poe" (Houghton Mifflin; $2.25 net), made notable in a way by the addition of five new poems. The publishing of such waifs is almost always of doubtful benefit to the poet, and certainly these discoveries add nothing to Poe's fame. But, in the case of such a writer as Poe, it would be scarcely human to refrain from printing any scrap of verse that might be attributed to him. Mr. Whitty's edition is the most comprehensive, though not otherwise the best, on the market, and we can be grateful to him for his long and enthusiastic service to the cause of his idol.

To Prof. Killis Campbell, of the University of Texas, must be given the credit of producing a most scholarly edition of "The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe" (Ginn & Co.). Perhaps the most notable feature of the book is the full use of references to the Poe literature, the volume of which will probably surprise even those who thought themselves well versed in this study. Occasionally the editor corrects an obvious misprint or faulty punctuation, but in such cases the notes always give the exact reading of the source. He sets his apparatus criticus at the bottom of the pages, which, considering the extraordinary interest attached to the growth of Poe's text, is probably the best place for it. This apparatus, like Mr. Whitty's, is intended to be absolutely complete, yet, as a matter of fact, there are a few divergences which show that one or the other has slipped. Thus in the text to the stanzas "To Helen," Campbell notes, but Whitty does not note, that "And" of line 10 was changed to "To" in Graham's. On the other hand, Whitty notes, but Campbell does not note, that the "Ah" of line 14 was printed "A" in the edition of 1831. Mr. Whitty does not inform us whether or not the "A" was followed by a comma in the 1831 edition, but he certainly does in his note print after "Ah" of the 1845 edition an exclamation point which does not appear in his text. We call attention to these discrepancies without undertaking to verify them; but they are very few in number. In general, Professor Campbell impresses us as a painstaking and accurate editor.