Most readers of his work would never guess that Edgar Allan Poe’s bestselling book was The Conchologists First Book, first published in April 1839. The author of that book was listed as Edgar Allan Poe. However, he was a consulting editor of the book and only wrote the Preface and Introduction. According to Poe documentarians, Dwight Thomas and David Jackson, Poe credited much of the work to scientist Thomas Wyatt for “his late excellent Manual of Conchology.” The book was originally meant to be an accessible and inexpensive abridgment of Wyatt’s original textbook (259).
The work was published under Poe’s name due to his popularity. It turned out to be the most popular book, in sales, printed under Poe’s name. The fact that Wyatt asked Poe to accept authorship demonstrates that at least one professional scientist identified Poe as a credible authority on science. Poe’s interest in seashells was likely inspired by his service in the United States Army along the coastline of Charleston, South Carolina, where he had plenty of time to explore the natural scenery.
In Poe’s Introduction to the book, he explains that the history of the study of mollusks (seashells) went back to the ancient Greeks, noting the descriptions of seashells by Pliny and Aristotle. He documents that there have been significant studies of seashells found on board numerous seafaring vessels on remote South Sea Islands in West Africa, Chili, and New Holland. He argues that “Few branches of Natural History… are of more adventitious importance” than Conchology (Poe’s Complete Works XIV 98). A notable feature of this book is that it was one of the first popular science books to include color pages, offering “illustrations of two hundred and fifteen shells, presenting a correct type of each genus” (95).
Poe’s book was one of the first scientific publications to offer color plate illustrations (see example page, below):
The first edition was so popular that the publishers printed the second one in the same year. The third was published in 1845 under Wyatt’s name, but Poe’s initials were only retained in the Preface (Thomas and Jackson 608). The Conchologists First Book shows that Poe was willing to accept the author’s credit for a work that he did not write. However, it also demonstrates that he was interested in natural science and in lending his name to a legitimate scientific work.
*An excerpt from Murray Ellison’s Master of Arts Thesis © 2015. Reprinted with Permission from thepoeblog.org – 7/4/2018
Sources:
Poe, Edgar A. The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe Volume XIV: Essays and Miscellaneous. Ed. Harrison, James A. New York: T. Crowell, 1902.
Thomas, Dwight and David Jackson, Ed.The Poe Log- A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1849.Boston: G.B. Hall and Company, 1987.
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