Sold for $10,000

8vo. [i-viii] [1]-91 [92, blank] [i-iv]. Half-title with "Wiley and Putnam's Library of American Books", name of stereotyper T. B. Smith on the title verso; 4pp. publisher’s advertisements at end, beginning “German Romance.”  Original blind-blocked blue cloth (rebacked in modern cloth preserving gilt-lettered portion of spine); half blue morocco folding case. Provenance: Sabin E. Mowry? (early signature on front blank leaf). 

FIRST EDITION of “the most important volume of poetry that had been issued up until that time in America” (Allen). The first edition of The Raven was usually issued with the second or third printing of Tales (not present in this volume). Within a month of its first appearance it was reprinted at least ten times, and Poe's fame soared with that of “The Raven.” It “made Poe's name known both in America and England, and brought him an immortality that by no other means could he have attained”; it “gave him fame as a poet such as no other American has received” (Robertson).  BAL 16147 (reissue B, usually bound with Poe’s Tales, and without signature <8> terminal advertisements); Grolier American 55; Heartman & Canny 92-97; Robertson, A Bibliography of the Writings of…Poe, San Francisco, 1934, vol. 2, pp.224-5.