First edition of the first collection of Poe’s tales, one of only 750 copies published, including such notable titles as “The Fall of the House of Usher”, “Ms. Found in a Bottle”, “Siope” (“Silence”) and “The Visionary” (“The Assignation”); from the library of Natalie Knowlton Blair (1887-1951), with her book labels.
“These volumes mark the culmination of Poe's effort, beginning as early as 1834, to get his prose tales into volume form. It is a milestone in his career as a prose writer, but was a failure commercially” (Heartman & Canny, A Bibliography of First Printings of the Writings of Edgar Allan Poe, p. 53).
BAL notes that signature 20, vol. II occurs in several states due to the progressive loosening of type during the course of a single printing, though having no relevance in terms of priority of issue. In this copy, p. 213 is correctly numbered, and the “i” in “ing”, line 13 up, and the hyphen at the end of line 6 up are both still in proper alignment.