Beschreibung:

POE, Edgar Allan (1809-1849). [Cover title:] The Prose Romances of Edgar A. Poe Uniform Serial Edition. No. 1; Containing, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, and the Man That Was Used Up . Philadelphia: Published by William H. Graham, 1843. 8 o (231 x 147 mm). 40 pages, numbered [9]-48. ORIGINAL PRINTED PALE TAN WRAPPERS (spine lacking and unprinted rear wrapper detached, wrappers a little soiled and spotted, an inch closed tear in blank lower margin of front wrapper, first page of text and a few other pages at rear foxed); tan half morocco folding case. FIRST EDITION OF "THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE" -- THE FIRST DETECTIVE STORY: THE RECENTLY DISCOVERED FIFTEENTH KNOWN COPY AND THE ONLY COPY IN THE ORIGINAL PRINTED WRAPPERS IN PRIVATE HANDS (just three other copies with wrappers intact are in institutional libraries). Only three other copies of this legendary rarity -- termed "the most valuable volume of American fiction" (The Lilly Library, The First Hundred Years of Detective Fiction , 1841-1941, p.13) -- are still in private collections: one is in facsimile wrappers, another is in contemporary wrappers, and the third is bound up in a pamphlet volume. Of the eleven copies in institutional libraries, two are in the original wrappers, one is rebound with the wrappers intact, two have the printed front wrapper only, and the remaining six are lacking original wrappers. SINCE THE PRINTED FRONT WRAPPER SERVES AS A TITLE-PAGE for this slim and most elusive pamphlet, its presence (as on the present copy) is essential. "Unsuccessful in his attempts to interest publishers in a collection of his tales, Poe hit upon the idea of publishing a story or two at a time in pamphlet form as a 'Uniform Serial Edition. Each number complete in itself. Price 12 ½ cents.' For the first and only number he revised 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue,' which had appeared in Graham's Magazine for April 1841 and 'The Man That Was Used Up,' which had appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine for August 1839. The pamphlet, The Prose Romances of Edgar A. Poe .. No. 1 , was probably issued in July 1843" (John D. Gordon, "Edgar Allan Poe. An Exhibition on the Centenary of His Death October 7, 1849" in Bulletin of the New York Public Library , Vol. 53, No. 10, October 1949, pp. 481-2). In "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," Poe's first "tale of ratiocination" (his term), the author created the detective story genre ("the beginning of it all," The Lilly Library, p.13). In it C. Auguste Dupin, an eccentric genius of exceptional analytic powers, solves a brutal double murder which took place in a locked room. After examining the evidence and discovering clues, and through his powers of deduction, Dupin identifies the criminal as an escaped ape. Dupin played "detective" (the term was not yet invented) in two further stories: "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt" (serialized late 1842 and early 1843) and "The Purloined Letter" (first appearance 1844). All three were collected in Poe's Tales (1845). "Poe understatedly called 'Murders in the Rue Morgue' 'something in a new key.' In fact, few other works can claim its authority in giving rise to a new popular genre and setting its conventions... Poe's successors took over many large and small features of his work: the depiction of the detective as a detached gentlemanly amateur not associated with the police; the use of a first-person narrator who is not the detective (such as Dr. Watson and Archie Goodwin); the formulaic opening intrusions of the outside world on the detective's comfortable bachelor quarters or office; the general investigative pattern and presentation of clues to the reader; and not least the crime committed in a locked room, of which the first example is 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' itself" (Kenneth Silverman, Edgar A. Poe Mournfull and Never-Ending Remembrance , New York, 1992, p.174). Only three other copies of The Prose Romances of Edgar Allan Poe... No. 1 have appeared at auction in the past forty years: a co