Philip Pendleton Cooke’s Copy of Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque

Any association copies of Poe's writings are of special interest. One such copy is the set of two volumes of Poe's Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque at the University of Virginia. Each volume of this unprepossessing set is inscribed in pencil on the front fly leaf, "To Mrs. Phil. P. Cooke from her husband. " Although Philip Pendleton Cooke (1816–1850) was on friendly terms with Poe at this point, there is no indication that the set was sent to Cooke by Poe, who would almost surely have included his own inscription. At Poe's request, Cooke wrote a memoir of Poe in 1846, as an update to what J. R. Lowell had provided to Graham's Magazine at the beginning of 1845. Poe had originally intended the memoir to be part of his project variously called the Living Writers of America and Literary America. The project never fully materialized, but Cooke's article eventually found itself published in the Southern Literary Messenger for January 1848. Cooke appears to have been that rare fellow author whom Poe was willing to praise, and from whom Poe would accept criticism, at least to a degree. It might also be noted that there is something wonderfully personal and especially interesting about a book that has been thoughtfully marked by a reader other than the original author. Often such markings might be seen as disfiguring, but in this case they act as a connection and almost a conversation the reader has with the writer of the book. They can serve as an acknowledgment that the author has successfully spoken to the reader and inspired him or her to express a corresponding idea. What more, beyond mere earthly rewards, could an author wish to achieve? It may seem strange that Cooke would present to his wife a book with sometimes shocking material in it, including the narrator's removal of teeth from the catatonic but still living Berenice and Madeline Usher scratching her way out of her coffin. It should be remembered, however, that even a story with as ghastly, calculated, and graphic a murder as "The Cask of Amontillado" first appeared in the pages of Godey's Lady's Book (November 1846). Poe first appears to have written to Cooke about July–August 1839. Cooke replied on September 16, 1839, commenting extensively about "Ligeia": He also dared a PS: Uncharacteristically, Poe took the criticism in good stride, replying in his letter of September 21, 1839, Of the three surviving letters from Poe to Cooke, two were first printed by Woodberry in Century Magazine ("Selections from the Correspondence of Edgar Allan Poe, " September and October 1894) without clearly specifying how the texts came into his hands, although the many errors suggest that he was provided with transcripts. The original manuscript of one of these letters was sold at auction from the collection of Frederick William French (Libbie sale, April 23–25, 1901, item 1307). These facts, and the disparate current locations and paths by which they were obtained, suggest that Cooke's library had already made its way through the hands of collectors and dealers. They may initially have passed to his brother, John Esten Cooke (1830–86). Alternatively, they may have remained with Phillip's wife, Willian Corbin Tayloe Burwell Cooke (1818–99) (known to family and friends as Anne), and their son, Nathaniel Burwell Cooke (1845–1918), or one of their four daughters (the last of whom died in 1910). Although dated on the title page as 1840, the volumes were available for purchase by about November 1839. This date is still too late to be the first time that Cooke had read Poe's works. Instead, it is likely that he first read them in the various magazines to which Poe contributed. (In his letter of December 19, 1839, for example, Cooke notes that he first read "The Haunted Palace" in the American Museum. ) It seems clear that Cooke read Poe's tales very carefully, and evidence of that reading remains in the volumes that he once possessed. In addition to the inscriptions from Cook to his wife, the volumes also bear the bookplates of Robert Coleman Taylor (1863–1942) and Lillian Gary Taylor (1885–1961). The catalog entry states that the books were a gift of Mrs. R. C. Taylor. Precisely where the Taylors obtained the volumes is not known, although both were prominent collectors of American literature. Mrs. Taylor's journals note that it was purchased by her husband in 1936 for 375 and presented to her as a Christmas gift. (Her journals, eighteen handwritten volumes, cataloging her collection by year of publication, are also in the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library of the University of Virginia. ) The volumes of American Book Prices Current that cover the appropriate years show only two auction records of copies of The Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, neither of which fits this description. It may, therefore, be presumed that Mr. Taylor purchased the set through a dealer, or directly from another collector. In this case, the reader portion of the conversation is somewhat complicated by the fact that the books carry only basic delimiters and the comments are related separately in letters. Following is a record of the passages that are marked, in ink, presumably by Cooke. In "Morella, " the following passages are marked: On page 15: On the same page: At the bottom of page 15, running to page 16: In "The Fall of House of Usher, " at the bottom of page 102, running to page 103: In particular, the portion reading "which now shone vividly through that once barely-discernible fissure" is underlined. The delimited portion of "Ligeia" is less obvious to interpret, but appears to be a long section beginning on page 186 and running to page 187: An additional slash appears just between the first and second sentences of this selection, which may have been intended to remove the first sentence from the selection, but the earlier slash is more prominent. In marking these passages from "Liegia" and "Morella, " Cooke broadly denoted in this copy of the book the portions dealing with the awareness of the transition of the souls, as he also noted in his letter. For "The Fall of the House of Usher, " Cooke marked only the passage that would seem to agree with the comment in his December 19, 1839, letter to Poe: "In your 'Fall of the House of Usher, ' unconnected with style, I think you very happy in that part where you prolong the scene with Roderick Usher after the death of his sister; and the glare of the moon thro' the sundering house, and the electric gleam visible around it, I think admirably conceived" (Poe Log, p. 283, with the full letter quoted at https: //www. eapoe. org/misc/letters/t3912190. htm). Although the same letter comments about "William Wilson" and "The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion, " there are no markings in the text of either story in the volumes. There are no markings at all in volume 2, beyond the initial inscription by Cooke.