The poem was an immense success, and was copied far and wide in all the newspapers of the country. Writing to F. W. Thomas, May 4, Poe says:
"'The Raven' has had a great run, Thomas—but I wrote it for the express purpose of running—just as I did the 'Gold Bug,' you know. The bird beat the bug, though, all hollow."
This popularity was the poet's greatest reward, for we learn that the actual money remuneration was only ten dollars. Poe makes us think of the early writers, like Bacon and Browne, whom we have seen take to printing their books to save them from the errors of the unlicensed publisher. In a preface to this volume he writes:
"These trifles are collected and republished chiefly with a view to their redemption from the many improvements to which they have been subjected while going at random 'the rounds of the press.' If what I have written is to circulate at all, I am naturally anxious that it should circulate as I wrote it...."
From the original straw-colored paper covers in which it appeared, about December, we learn that the book was issued as one of a series, Wiley And Putnam's Library Of American Books. No. VIII., and that its price was the unusual sum of thirty-one cents. Among the other volumes, its companions in the set, were Journal of an African Cruiser, edited by Nathaniel Hawthorne; Tales of Edgar A. Poe; Letters from Italy, by J. T. Headley; The Wigwam and the Cabin, by W. Gilmore Simms; and Big Abel, by Cornelius Mathews.
Duodecimo.
Collation: 4 ll., 91 pp.