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The Brevities: Pinakidia, Marginalia and Other Works
Includes full annotations, bibliographical references, useful index. Includes their publishing history, sources and borrowings, and all other aspects. Individual items total over 600. 60-page Introduction.
575 pages, Hardcover
Published December 31, 1985
10 people want to read
About the author
Edgar Allan Poe
9,816 books28.7k followersThe name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead. His works have been in print since 1827 and include such literary classics as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, and The Fall of the House of Usher. This versatile writer’s oeuvre includes short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, and hundreds of essays and book reviews. He is widely acknowledged as the inventor of the modern detective story and an innovator in the science fiction genre, but he made his living as America’s first great literary critic and theoretician. Poe’s reputation today rests primarily on his tales of terror as well as on his haunting lyric poetry.
Just as the bizarre characters in Poe’s stories have captured the public imagination so too has Poe himself. He is seen as a morbid, mysterious figure lurking in the shadows of moonlit cemeteries or crumbling castles. This is the Poe of legend. But much of what we know about Poe is wrong, the product of a biography written by one of his enemies in an attempt to defame the author’s name.
The real Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809. Edgar was the second of three children. His other brother William Henry Leonard Poe would also become a poet before his early death, and Poe’s sister Rosalie Poe would grow up to teach penmanship at a Richmond girls’ school. Within three years of Poe’s birth both of his parents had died, and he was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia while Poe’s siblings went to live with other families. Mr. Allan would rear Poe to be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe had dreams of being a writer in emulation of his childhood hero the British poet Lord Byron. Early poetic verses found written in a young Poe’s handwriting on the backs of Allan’s ledger sheets reveal how little interest Poe had in the tobacco business.
For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_al...
Just as the bizarre characters in Poe’s stories have captured the public imagination so too has Poe himself. He is seen as a morbid, mysterious figure lurking in the shadows of moonlit cemeteries or crumbling castles. This is the Poe of legend. But much of what we know about Poe is wrong, the product of a biography written by one of his enemies in an attempt to defame the author’s name.
The real Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809. Edgar was the second of three children. His other brother William Henry Leonard Poe would also become a poet before his early death, and Poe’s sister Rosalie Poe would grow up to teach penmanship at a Richmond girls’ school. Within three years of Poe’s birth both of his parents had died, and he was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia while Poe’s siblings went to live with other families. Mr. Allan would rear Poe to be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe had dreams of being a writer in emulation of his childhood hero the British poet Lord Byron. Early poetic verses found written in a young Poe’s handwriting on the backs of Allan’s ledger sheets reveal how little interest Poe had in the tobacco business.
For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_al...
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 8, 2021
The rating for individual sections represent my personal likes however, I am not a scholar or academic which this book would serve very valuable information on the writings of Poe and his sources, therefor its overall rating of 5 Stars is for what I feel the meticulous and painstaking work of the editor Burton R. Pollin deserves.
Introduction - 5 Stars
A very well written section by the editor explaining the origins and meanings of Poe's ideas behind each of the seven sections in Brevities. It was very influential in helping me understand and unravel exactly what the individual pieces were in making up the brevities in Poe's conception of these ideas.
Pinakidia - 3 Stars
"In the August 1836 issue of the Southern Literary Messenger, of which Poe had been the functioning if not the nominal editor for a year, he published a group of very short articles on literary, historical, and general cultural topics to which he gave the title of Pinakidia.” (p. xi)
These articles were ". . . comprised of a collection of brief observations and random statements on miscellaneous subjects, that appeared in the 1836 issue of the Southern Literary Messenger. In his preface to the 173 statements, Poe defines the title as 'tablets' culled from his notebooks that shed an interesting sidelight on his secondary sources. Simply an unconnected collection, similar material might be found in numerous periodicals in his time under such headings as Random Thoughts, Odds and Ends, Stray Leaves, Scraps, and Brevities, most having 'pretensions to originality.' In contrast, Poe admits that his collection 'is not original, and will be readily recognized as such by the classical and general reader.' He has [did] not catalogued his work: 'No arrangement has been considered necessary; and, indeed, so heterogenous a farrago it would have been an endless task to methodize.' Thus, the reader of Pinakidia learns [such nuggets as] 'during the period of the middle ages, the Germans lived in utter ignorance of the art of writing,' 'of the ten tragedies of Seneca (the only Roman tragedies extant), nine are on Greek subjects;' and 'the translators of the Old Testament have used the word Eternity only once.' " Sova, Dawn B. (2001). Edgar Allan Poe, A to Z : the essential reference to his life and work. New York: Checkmark Books. (188)
"The Pinakidia or Tablets he [Poe] pretended to derive from a classic Greek author, but in reality he adapted the term, perhaps unique, from Isaac Disraeli's Curiosities of Literature, a popular compendium of short learned literary observations. Poe maintained that he was offering the readers 172 short articles copied from his 'common — place' or memorandum book — a document unfound and perhaps never existent." (p. v)
Pollin's notes after each Pinakidia were extremely helpful in explaining Poe's sources for each of his Pins.
Marginalia - 3 Stars
" 'Marginalia' — a very useful word of wide currency today, to maintain the undoubted pretense that he was collecting his 291 “marginalic notes” (the adjective being his coinage). These were issued from November 1844 through September 1849 — a five — year span during which he presented the full scope of his varied and maturing views on literature, social theory, history, psychology, and science." (pp. v-vi)
Supplemental Pinakidia - 3 Stars
Literary Small Talk - 3 Stars
A Chapter of Suggestions - 3 Stars
Fifty Suggestions - 3 Stars
Supplementary Marginalia - 3 Stars
Introduction - 5 Stars
A very well written section by the editor explaining the origins and meanings of Poe's ideas behind each of the seven sections in Brevities. It was very influential in helping me understand and unravel exactly what the individual pieces were in making up the brevities in Poe's conception of these ideas.
Pinakidia - 3 Stars
"In the August 1836 issue of the Southern Literary Messenger, of which Poe had been the functioning if not the nominal editor for a year, he published a group of very short articles on literary, historical, and general cultural topics to which he gave the title of Pinakidia.” (p. xi)
These articles were ". . . comprised of a collection of brief observations and random statements on miscellaneous subjects, that appeared in the 1836 issue of the Southern Literary Messenger. In his preface to the 173 statements, Poe defines the title as 'tablets' culled from his notebooks that shed an interesting sidelight on his secondary sources. Simply an unconnected collection, similar material might be found in numerous periodicals in his time under such headings as Random Thoughts, Odds and Ends, Stray Leaves, Scraps, and Brevities, most having 'pretensions to originality.' In contrast, Poe admits that his collection 'is not original, and will be readily recognized as such by the classical and general reader.' He has [did] not catalogued his work: 'No arrangement has been considered necessary; and, indeed, so heterogenous a farrago it would have been an endless task to methodize.' Thus, the reader of Pinakidia learns [such nuggets as] 'during the period of the middle ages, the Germans lived in utter ignorance of the art of writing,' 'of the ten tragedies of Seneca (the only Roman tragedies extant), nine are on Greek subjects;' and 'the translators of the Old Testament have used the word Eternity only once.' " Sova, Dawn B. (2001). Edgar Allan Poe, A to Z : the essential reference to his life and work. New York: Checkmark Books. (188)
"The Pinakidia or Tablets he [Poe] pretended to derive from a classic Greek author, but in reality he adapted the term, perhaps unique, from Isaac Disraeli's Curiosities of Literature, a popular compendium of short learned literary observations. Poe maintained that he was offering the readers 172 short articles copied from his 'common — place' or memorandum book — a document unfound and perhaps never existent." (p. v)
Pollin's notes after each Pinakidia were extremely helpful in explaining Poe's sources for each of his Pins.
Marginalia - 3 Stars
" 'Marginalia' — a very useful word of wide currency today, to maintain the undoubted pretense that he was collecting his 291 “marginalic notes” (the adjective being his coinage). These were issued from November 1844 through September 1849 — a five — year span during which he presented the full scope of his varied and maturing views on literature, social theory, history, psychology, and science." (pp. v-vi)
Supplemental Pinakidia - 3 Stars
Literary Small Talk - 3 Stars
A Chapter of Suggestions - 3 Stars
Fifty Suggestions - 3 Stars
Supplementary Marginalia - 3 Stars
Displaying 1 of 1 review