The Gift [First Appearance of William Wilson (Poe), 1839]

Philadelphia: Carey & Hart, 1839. First Edition / First Appearance . Original Morocco. Very Good. 7 1/4 x 4 3/4. Steel engravings. Philadelphia: Cary & Hart, 1839. First appearance of Poe's short story, "William Wilson", Pp. 229-253 in The Gift: A Christmas and New Year's Present for 1840. Whole volume offered. viii, [17]-328 pp. With 8 (of 9) steel-engraved plates. 7¼x4¾, original morocco elaborately tooled in gilt, all edges gilt. First appearance of this sort story later collected in Tales of the Grotesque (1840). BAL 16130. Light scuffing to spine ends and corners; foxing to plates and occasionally to text, lacking the frontispiece, a signature sprung, else very good. Bright gilt and leather. Poe's semi-autobiographical tale of a young man who encounters a mysterious identical twin - who even bears the narrator's name, William Wilson - while at boarding school. The bond that grows between the two, the narrator's eventual hatred of his twin, and the blurring of distinction between the pair was an early venture by Poe into psychology and philosophy, and manifested his growing sophistication as a writer. That Wilson shares Poe's day of birth - January 19th - and even his birth year (1809) in some later renderings (this first appearance has Wilson's birth year as 1811), that Wilson had a schoolmaster (as did Poe) named Bransby, and that much of Wilson's personal history reflects, at least qualitatively, much of Poe's, stands as evidence of intentional autobiographical treatment. This, in turn, led to much speculation that the story bears clues to the mental meandering of Poe's own mind - as, indeed, it might. Poe deemed William Wilson to be one of his "best tales", with seven others. (Quinn 430). L37n