Page:Al Aaraaf (1933).djvu/13

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of the book, if so many were issued. But my interpretation is that Hatch and Dunning gave Poe 250 copies unbound. Parts of a copy in sheets were sold (Walpole Galleries, sale catalogue, New York, March 25, 1930, lots 74 and 75) presumably from the possession of a Baltimore family. The number of copies bound and sold or circulated in the usual manner was probably very small. At present perhaps a score of copies are known. In addition to copies at Harvard, Yale, Peabody Institute, New York Public Library, Huntington Library, and the Poe Shrine, Messrs. Heartmann and Rede list a half. dozen privately owned copies in their recent Census, and others unlocated. The book is an octavo of 36 leaves (72 pages with the wide margins Poe admired), beautifully printed on paper watermarked "A mies, Philad'a," really a charming volume. The copy in the Wakeman Collection (American Art Association, New York, April 28 and 29, 1924, lot 936) bore on the title page the date 1820, usually described as a misprint. But that copy belonged to Elizabeth Herring, a cousin of Poe's, and was used by Poe in preparing copy for his 1845 volume The Raven and Other Poems (in which he abandonedthe elaborate revisions of 1831, and gave his poems of 1829 with a few corrections). I have not examined the title page under a glass, but the suggestion that the date may have been altered, either idly or hoax