[NATURAL HISTORY] -- [WALLACE, Alfred Russel (1823-1913)]. POE, Edgar Allan (1809-1849). Tales of Adventure Mystery and Imagination. London, New York and Melbourne, 1890.

8vo (229 x 114 mm). Frontispiece portrait, full-page woodcut. Contemporary half green calf, marbled boards, spine in 5 compartments in 4 raised, lettering-piece gilt in second, others gilt, marbled edges (light rubbing at fore-corners). Provenance: William G. Wallace (gift inscription dated Christmas 1890, see below).

Later edition of Poe's work. INSCRIBED BY ALFRED WALLACE WITH A GIFT INSCRIPTION TO HIS SON. Alfred Wallace, although a scientist by trade, appreciated the study of the arts and was an early admirer and literary critic of Poe. In 1904, Wallace published a pair of short essays describing what he had mistaken to be a previously unknown poem by Poe titled "Leonainie". This turned out to be a hoax that had been perpetrated by the American writer James Whitcomb Riley some years earlier. Wallace discussed the matter in a series of letters with literary figure Ernest Marriott, and was later collected and published into a privately printed pamphlet (see below).

[With:] WALLACE. Edgar Allan Poe. A Series of Seventeen Letters. New York: Privately printed, n.d. [ca 1930]. 8vo. Original two-tone cloth, printed cover label. FIRST EDITION, LIMITED ISSUE, one of 500 copies, this being unnumbered.

Property from the Estate of Peter Fortsas

[NATURAL HISTORY] -- [WALLACE, Alfred Russel (1823-1913)]. POE, Edgar Allan (1809-1849). Tales of Adventure Mystery and Imagination. London, New York and Melbourne, 1890.