Although it is probably not one of the great historical pranks, Poe's “Balloon Hoax” still has the power to mislead and confound readers up to the current day. T. O. Mabbott, in his edition of The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Volume III: Tales and Sketches, 1843–1849 (3:1063–88), gives the full text of the hoax, with annotations and a variorum of the 1844 and 1850 printings. Although Mabbott retains a number of changes that he considers to have been authorial in the Griswold text, which serves as his copy text, he dismisses one potentially significant change of “British Channel” in the 1850 printing back to the 1844 “Bristol Channel.” (There are references to both bodies of water elsewhere in the story.) This change to “British Channel” has become somewhat canonical as it was carried forward by several future editors, including J. H. Ingram (1874–75), E. C. Stedman and...
Meanderings Here and There in Poe's “Balloon Hoax”
jeffrey a. savoye is an independent scholar, long and closely associated with the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore. He is also an honorary member of the Poe Studies Association. As the coeditor of The Collected Letters of Edgar Allan Poe (2008), the standard edition of Poe's correspondence, and the author of dozens of articles, published chiefly in the Edgar Allan Poe Review and Poe Studies / Dark Romanticism, he has deeply explored various aspects of Poe's life and writings. He is also the driving force behind the well-regarded website of the Poe Society, http://www.eapoe.org/.
Jeffrey A. Savoye; Meanderings Here and There in Poe's “Balloon Hoax”. The Edgar Allan Poe Review 1 November 2017; 18 (2): 257–263. doi: https://doi.org/10.5325/edgallpoerev.18.2.0257
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