All footnotes to the texts or insertions in square brackets signed ‘Ed.’ are authentically Poe’s, denoting the ‘Editor’ as ‘Edgar’.

Bibliography

SPECIALIZED work, devoted to individual pieces, is attached to their individual commentaries at the rear. More general work is still rare. The initial research into Poe’s use of contemporary science in his fiction was consolidated in three (unpublished) doctoral theses:

CARROLL D. LAVERTY, Science and Pseudo-Science in the Writings of Poe (Duke University, 1951)

JOHN F. LIGON, On Desperate Seas: A Study of Poe’s Imaginary Journeys (University of Washington, 1961)

ELVA BAER KREMENLIEV, The Literary Uses of Astronomy in the Writings of Edgar Allan Poe (University of California, Los Angeles, 1963)

The debate on Poe’s status as the pioneer of science fiction has been conducted, among others, by:

HUBERT MATTHEY, Essai sur le merveilleux dans la littérature française depuis 1800 (Paris : Payot, 1915)

LÉON LEMMONIER, ‘Edgar Poe et le roman scientifique française’, La Grande Revue vol. 83 (1930), pp. 214–23

H. P. LOVECRAFT, Supernatural Horror in Literature (New York: B. Abramson, 1945; Dover Books, 1973)

J. O. BAILEY, Pilgrims through Space and Time: Trends and Patterns in Scientific and Utopian Fiction (New York: Argus Books, 1947)

PETER PENZOLDT, The Supernatural in Fiction (London: P. Nevill, 1952; New York : Humanities Press, 1965)

CLARKE OLNEY, ‘Edgar Allan Poe: Science Fiction Pioneer’, Georgia Review vol. 12 (1958), pp. 416–21

SAM MOSKOWITZ, Explorers of the Infinite: Shapers of Science Fiction (Cleveland: World Publishing Co., 1963)

H. BRUCE FRANKLIN, ‘Edgar Allan Poe and Science Fiction’, Future Perfect: American Science Fiction of the Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966)

BRIAN W. ALDISS, Billion Year Spree: The True History of Science Fiction (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973; New York: Doubleday, 1973)

Baudelaire translated all pieces in this collection, with the exception of ‘The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade’, ‘Mellonta Tauta’ and ‘Von Kempelen and His Discovery’. Details of the first publication in France is given under each separate head.

MS. Found in a Bottle

Qui n’a plus qu’un moment à vivre

N’a plus rien à dissimuler.

QUINAULT – Atys1

OF my country and of my family I have little to say. Ill usage and length of years have driven me from the one, and estranged me from the other. Hereditary wealth afforded me an education of no common order, and a contemplative turn of mind enabled me to methodize the stores which early study very diligently garnered up. – Beyond all things, the study of the German moralists gave me great delight; not from any ill-advised admiration of their eloquent madness, but from the ease with which my habits of rigid thought enabled me to detect their falsities. I have often been reproached with the aridity of my genius; a deficiency of imagination has been imputed to me as a crime; and the Pyrrhonism of my opinions2 has at all times rendered me notorious. Indeed, a strong relish for physical philosophy has, I fear, tinctured my mind with a very common error of this age – I mean the habit of referring occurrences, even the least susceptible of such reference, to the principles of that science. Upon the whole, no person could be less liable than myself to be led away from the severe precincts of truth by the ignes fatui of superstition. I have thought proper to premise thus much, lest the incredible tale I have to tell should be considered rather the raving of a crude imagination, than the positive experience of a mind to which the reveries of fancy have been a dead letter and a nullity.

After many years spent in foreign travel, I sailed in the year 18—, from the port of Batavia, in the rich and populous island of Java, on a voyage to the Archipelago of the Sunda islands.3 I went as passenger – having no other inducement than a kind of nervous restlessness which haunted me as a fiend.

Our vessel was a beautiful ship of about four hundred tons, copper-fastened, and built at Bombay of Malabar teak. She was freighted with cotton-wool and oil, from the Lachadive islands. We had also on board coir, jaggeree, ghee,4 cocoa-nuts, and a few cases of opium. The stowage was clumsily done, and the vessel consequently crank.5

We got under way with a mere breath of wind, and for many days stood along the eastern coast of Java, without any other incident to beguile the monotony of our course than the occasional meeting with some of the small grabs of the Archipelago6 to which we were bound.

One evening, leaning over the taffrail, I observed a very singular, isolated cloud, to the N. W.