Bon-Bon (short Story) - Publication History

Publication History

Poe originally submitted "Bon-Bon" to the Philadelphia Saturday Courier under the title "The Bargain Lost" as an entry to a writing contest. Poe also submitted four other tales: "Metzengerstein", "The Duke de L'Omelette", "A Tale of Jerusalem", and "A Decided Loss". Though none of his entries won the $100 prize, the editors of the Courier were impressed enough that they published all of Poe's stories over the next few months. "The Bargain Lost" was published on December 1, 1831, though it is unclear if Poe was paid for its publication. There were several differences between this version and later versions: originally, the main character was named Pedro Garcia, his encounter was not with the devil himself but with one of his messengers, and the story takes place in Venice rather than France. Poe retitled the story "Bon-Bon—A Tale" when it was republished in the Southern Literary Messenger in August 1835. It was later published as part of Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in 1845.

The original epigraph preceding the story was from William Shakespeare's As You Like It: "The heathen philosopher, when he had a mind to eat a grape, would open his lips when he put it into his mouth, meaning thereby that grapes were made to eat and lips to open." Poe's final version of the story had a longer epigraph in verse from Les Premiers Traits de l'erudition universelle (The Most Important Characteristics of Universal Wisdom) by Baron Bielfeld.