NOTES1

TAMERLANE (1)

(1827; Yankee, December, 1829 (in part); 1829; 1831; 1845)

(TEXT: 1845)

Date of Composition. Tamerlane is the first of the poems in 1827, and it is also given the initial position in the group of " Poems Written in Youth" in the collective edition of 1845; but whether or not it is the earliest of Poe's poems it is impossible to say. Poe claims in the preface of 1827 that "the greater part" of the poems published in that edition " were written in the year 1821-2." It is barely possible that Tamerlane was originally conceived as early as this — when Poe was a child of twelve or thirteen - but that it had reached at that time a stage approximating that in which we first find it is highly improbable. Poe was notoriously reckless in his citation of dates, and he took delight in mystifying his public. In the light of all the circumstances now known to us, it seems unlikely that the poem was written before 1826. Text. The text of Tamerlane followed in the present edition (save for sundry corrections pointed out in the notes) is that of 1845. This text is based on that of 1829, from which it differs verbally in only one line (57). The text of 1831 is also based on 1829, but departs from it in the omission of some forty lines, in the addition of about fifty lines, and in the introduction of numerous verbal changes. Among the added passages in 1831 are imperfect drafts of A Dream within a Dream and The Lake: To both published as separate items in 1827 and 1829. The text of 1827 is much fuller than the later versions and for this reason has been reproduced in the footnotes of the present edition in its entirety. A manuscript copy of the poem once in the possession of L. A. Wilmer (see Stedman and Woodberry, X, pp. 199–208) represents a stage intermediate between the texts of 1827 and 1829.

1 The figures in parenthesis after the titles of the poems refer to pages of the text.