Tamerlane and Other Poems - Publication History

Publication History

Sometime in the spring of 1827, Poe turned over his manuscripts to an 18-year old printer named Calvin F. S. Thomas, whose family may have been known by Poe's birth parents. Thomas had previously only printed labels, flyers, and other small jobs. Poe used his own money to pay for the publication of his poems as the 40-page collection Tamerlane and Other Poems, the only known book printed by Thomas. The collection was pamphlet-sized, 6.75 by 4.5 inches. Poe was 18 years old when the collection was released in July 1827 and only 50 copies were printed. The total production number is the subject of dispute; various scholars believe the number was slightly lower (only 20 copies) or substantially higher (as many as 200).

Tamerlane and Other Poems was published anonymously with the credit granted to "a Bostonian". His name, typically listed as "Edgar A. Poe", was not published with his work until his second collection, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems in late 1829. Poe may have chosen not to give his name so that his foster father, John Allan, would not know where he was; moreover, his choice to embrace his Bostonian heritage may have been an attempt to distance himself from the Allan family in Richmond. Boston was, at the time, a center for publishing and the literary world. By the time the book was released, Poe was already in the Army.

Poe introduced the collection with an apologetic notice admitting the low quality of his poems. He said they were not intended to ever be published and "why they are now published concerns no one" but the author. He claimed, however, that the majority of the poems were written between 1820 and 1821, "when the author had not completed his fourteenth year" though this is assumed to be an exaggeration. Poe used the low circulation of this collection to attract readers later in his career, suggesting the 1827 poetry book had been "suppressed through circumstances of a private nature". That second collection, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems, included revised versions of five of the nine poems from Tamerlane and Other Poems.

Distribution of Tamerlane and Other Poems was so light that Rufus Wilmot Griswold in 1850 claimed it had never existed, noting that none had been found. The first known copy turned up in 1859 with a second found in 1874. A type facsimile of a copy held by the British Museum, edited and introduced by Richard Herne Shepherd, was published as a limited edition in 1884. Another copy of Tamerlane and Other Poems was published in a 1941 facsimile by Thomas Ollive Mabbott, who provided the introduction; his correction and additions to this are found in a subsequent publication.