A recently-discovered Poe manuscript poem will be sold at Bloomsbury New York's 10 December sale of Important Books and Manuscripts, according to an auction house press release. An early version of Poe's poem "The Sleeper," this unpublished variant is titled "Irene," and is believed to be the "earliest extant version of a poem that Poe considered even better than 'The Raven.'"
Bloomsbury's press release goes on to note "The poem is an extraordinary discovery and contains ... one long stanza and other textual variants not found in the published versions. The provenance of this poem is impeccable and truly extraordinary."Poe copied this poem into the autograph album of a "Richmond belle," in 1830. [Kind of a creepy poem for that particular purpose, but hey, it's Poe].
The poem will go on the block with an estimate of $100,000-200,000. The Bloomsbury catalog with further details is not yet online, but I'll post a link to that when it's available.
