Now, as for the text, we have updated some hyphened words to reflect their modern counterparts: master-piece is now masterpiece, et al.

We have also provided over 130 footnotes to better identify the many persons, works, and sources noted by Ingram. Additionally, we have retained his nine original footnotes and have set them out using asterisks.^*Like this — and if multiple original footnotes appear in the same chapter, then we increase their number accordingly, like so.**

As a bonus, we have included Poe’s 1846 essay The Philosophy of Composition, both because Ingram quotes from it so extensively and because its inclusion seemed corollary as it is Poe’s own elucidation (or not) of the methods he employed to engineer The Raven.

To read our full thoughts, check out “This little volume was the first . . .”

“If Edgar Poe’s Raven be not ‘the most popular lyrical poem in the world,’ it is one of the most remarkable poems of the age, and well deserves all the honors of a classic. Mr. John H. Ingram devotes an entire volume to commentary on the Raven, in which he includes a history and critical examination of the poem, translations into French, German, Hungarian, and Latin, and numerous parodies of very varying merit.” —The Westminster Review

“This is an interesting monograph on Poe’s famous poem. First comes the genesis of the poem, with a criticism, in which Mr. Ingram declines to accept the history as entirely genuine. Much curious information is collected in this essay. Then follows the poem itself . . . But perhaps the most interesting chapter in the book is that on the ‘Fabrications.’”—The Spectator

“Probably no man living has taken so much pains as Mr. Ingram to collect all possible memorials of Poe, and he deserves hearty thanks for this zeal.” —The Nation

“Everyone reads the poem and praises it . . . justly, we think, for it seems to us full of originality and power.” —The New World

“The Poe cult is increasing, and scholars continue their study of his erratic life and his surpassing art.” —Cosmopolitan

“Mr. John H. Ingram is well-known to be a specialist on the subject of Edgar Allan Poe . . . Poe’s personal reputation owes much to Mr. Ingram, who has succeeded in removing some of the blackest blots thrown upon it by Griswold and others.” —The Critic

“Poe was a great master of artifices and of a cunning style . . . His parades of minute detail gave an intense reality to the scenes into which he introduced his bizarre and spectral figures . . . The ingenuity of Poe’s stories has its counterpart in the notable metrical skill of his verse. The Raven (a masterpiece in verbal technique) and “Annabel Lee” live in the memory and never spoil.” —The Spectator

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe with Literary and Historical Commentary