For a full explanation of circumstances attending the publication of the Manual of Conchology the reader is referred to Harrison's "Edgar Allan Poe," Virginia Edition, p. 146. It suffices here to say that the work was exploited by Professor Wyatt, Professor MacMurtree and Poe. Wyatt wished to get out a popular and inexpensive edition to pay for loss on a costly work that would not sell; with this in view he engaged Poe to issue the former under his own name. Wyatt was far more responsible than Poe for non-acknowledgment of Captain Thomas Brown's "Conchologist's Text Book," published in Glasgow in 1837, from which the first twenty pages were drawn. Poe, too, was undoubtedly in the wrong, but Wyatt, selling the book, seems to have escaped the censure that fell upon the unfortunate young man who with superhuman efforts was eking out in any direction offering his weekly salary of ten dollars; this regular amount just in view after a time of dependence on returns from contributions to magazines.
In this same year Poe's "Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque," were published in two volumes, and dedicated to Col. William Drayton, of Philadelphia, "With every Sentiment of Respect, Gratitude, and Esteem, by his obliged Friend and Servant, the Author."
The relations between Burton and Poe had never been agreeable, they quarreled incessantly, one cause of disagreement, being Poe's unyielding wish and efforts for a magazine of his own, which had progressed as far as the prospectus issued in 1840, signed by Clarke and Poe. The name of the new magazine was to be the Penn Monthly, and Felix O. C. Darley was to furnish original designs for its illustrations.
