Poe, Edgar Allan | Tamerlane — the most poignant rarity in American literature

Poe, Edgar Allan

Tamerlane, and Other Poems. By a Bostonian. Boston: Calvin. F. S. Thomas, 1827

12mo (162 × 107 mm). Printed in black on machine-made wove paper; moderately foxed, a few slight stains, about six letters on page five over-inked in the press, a few random pencil-marks on pages 8-9 mostly erased. Original printed wrappers, titled on the front with printer's advertisement on the rear, each within a typographic border, the edges trimmed smooth as issued; unrestored and unsophisticated, with the original stitching intact (the quires first gathered loosely with thinner brown thread, then neatly oversewed in blank inner wrappers with thicker white thread, and the printed outer wrappers laid down overall); the wrappers and a bit stained and frayed, the spine intermittently worn, the whole notched in the outer and lower margins. Fine dark-red morocco pull-off case gilt, by Rivière & Son. A remarkable survival in both condition and circumstance.