Author: Edgar Allan Poe.
Title: Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, Including Some Poems Not Hitherto Introduced in His Works; To Which is Added a Full and Impartial Memoir of the Poet, with Original Notes and Explanatory Remarks to the Poems.
Publisher: New York: Henry L. Williams, 1882.
Language: Text in English.
Size: 7.5" x 5".
Pages: 194 pages.
Binding: Attractive and near fine beautiful publisher’s original full brown cloth binding, richly embossed and decorated in gilt and black on the front board and spine with floral and geometric motifs, gilt cherub vignette, and a large gilt panel bearing the word “POE.” (hinges fine, overall slightly scuffed - as shown) under a protective removable mylar cover. All edges gilt. A stunning example of late Victorian book design. The binding remains remarkably bright, tight, and clean, with only light shelf wear to extremities.
Content: Very good content (bright, tight and clean, rare light foxing or staining - as shown, ownership inscription dated 1884 to front endpaper - as shown).  The typography is framed with red printed borders throughout, giving the text pages a refined presentation.
Illustrations: Illustrated with an engraved frontispiece portrait of Edgar Allan Poe with tissue guard and additional full-page wood-engraved plates, including Poe’s monument at Baltimore and poetic scenes such as “Death the while stole o’er my senses in that lovely isle.” (Complete).

Estimate: (USD 450 – 500).

The book: A strikingly preserved 1882 Victorian edition of The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, beautifully printed and bound in elaborate gilt and black relief. This edition includes not only Poe’s most famous poems—The Raven, Lenore, Annabel Lee, Ulalume, The Bells, and Eldorado—but also a selection of lesser-known early works and verses “not hitherto introduced in his works.”

Prefaced by an extensive biographical memoir, this volume aimed to offer contemporary readers a sympathetic yet “full and impartial” portrait of Poe, countering earlier sensationalist accounts. The ornate gilt binding reflects the late 19th-century fascination with Poe’s aesthetic mystique and the Victorian revival of the Gothic imagination.

An exceptional copy—both as a literary collectible and as a superb example of decorative American publishing art from the Gilded Age.

The author: Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), American poet, short-story writer, and literary critic, is celebrated as one of the architects of modern Gothic literature and a master of psychological and symbolic verse. His poetic genius shines in The Raven (1845), Annabel Lee, and Ulalume, where he explores themes of loss, memory, and the haunting persistence of beauty and death. Poe’s pioneering contributions to detective fiction (The Murders in the Rue Morgue) and his theory of the “unity of effect” profoundly influenced generations of writers from Baudelaire and Mallarmé to Borges and Lovecraft.