WCP4914

Letter (WCP4914.5324)

[1]

Broadstone, Dorset

Jan[uar]y. 10th. 1904

Dear Sir

I have sent "Leonaine" to the "Fortnightly" & Mr. Courtney says he will print it with my history of it & remarks in the next issue, but as I sent you a copy some months back he wishes to be quite sure that it has not been allowed to get into any persons hands who might anticipate the publication in some newspaper. I think you said in one of your letters that you were sending or had sent a copy to Mr. Ingram. Please let me [2] know if you did so, and what was his reply. Also whether you have let any other person have a copy, who might rush off to some newspaper & get it printed for the credit of being first.

Yours very truly | Alfred R. Wallace [signature]

P.S. Taking all the circumstances into consideration including Ingram's account of the last few weeks of Poe's life, I have come to the conclusion that this was the very last thing Poe wrote, & it was probably written only a few days before his death.

A. R. W.

Editorial information

Status: Draft transcription [Letter (WCP4914.5324)]

For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon

Revision history

Transcribed by Benny, Ruth [2015-02-24] Transcription checked by Benny, Ruth [2015-02-24] Transcription checked by Sherwood, Danni [2020-08-10]

Published letter (WCP4914.5501)

[1]1 [p. 11]

Broadstone, Dorset

Jany. 10th, 1904

Ernest Marriott, Esq.

Dear Sir:

I have sent "Leonaine" to the "Fortnightly" & Mr. Courtney says he will print it with my history of it & remarks in the next issue, but as I sent you a copy some months back he wishes to be quite sure that it has not been allowed to get into any persons hands who might anticipate the publication in some newspaper. I think you said in one of your letters that you were sending or had sent a copy to Mr. Ingram. Please let me know if you did so, and what was his reply. Also whether you have let any other person have a copy, who might rush off to some newspaper & get it printed for the credit of being first.

Yours very truly,

(signed) Alfred R. Wallace.

P.S. Taking all the circumstances into consideration including Ingram's account of the last few weeks of Poe's life, I have come to the conclusion that this was the very last thing Poe wrote, & it was probably written only a few days before his death.

(signed) A. R. W.

1
Editor Charles H. Smith's Note: Eighth of fifteen letters in a pamphlet, a background to which is as follows: In 1904 Wallace published a pair of short essays (S612 and S614) describing what he had mistakenly taken to be a previously unknown poem by Edgar Allan Poe. This turned out to be a hoax that had been perpetrated by the Indiana writer James Whitcomb Riley some years earlier. In late 1903 Wallace had entered into a correspondence with the literary figure Ernest Marriott about this matter; sometime later Wallace's part of the correspondence—seventeen letters in all (actually, fifteen separately dated ones)—was collected and turned into a privately printed pamphlet. Who did this and when it was done is unknown, though it could not have taken place any later than 1930 (by which time both Wallace and Marriott were long dead), the date a copy of the pamphlet was added to the New York Public Library's collection.

Editorial information

Status: Draft transcription [Published letter (WCP4914.5501)]

For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon

Revision history

Transcribed by Smith, Charles Hyde [2013-02-07] Transcription checked by Catchpole, Caroline [2013-02-08]

Please cite as “WCP4914,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 27 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP4914