I am rying to find out whether this edition is very collectable. It is called:

The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe. Raven Edition, 10 Volumes published in 1902 by the Lamb Publishing Company of New York. Limited Edition of 1000 sets of which my set is number 115. Red cloth binding. Any information on this set is appreciated. My web search has not been able to find this edition

-- Anonymous, June 25, 2004

Answers

There are hundreds of these generic 10-volume editions of Poe's works, most printed about 1902. Each named edition would typically be limited to 1,000 copies, but another named edition of another 1,000 (with identical contents) was sure to be in production, and another, and another. They might look nice on a shelf, but in general they are not sought by collectors.

-- Anonymous, June 29, 2004

If your own set has, as opening the first volume, a (nice, sympathetic) introduction by Ch. F. Richardson, this first volume being the one with Poe's Poems, together with his Essays on Poetry, all that "Outis" said concerns very exactly your own edition... The peculiarity of this set is just confined in the approximatively chronological agencement of its matters, and in the reproduction of a lot of (Canadian) F. S. Coburn's (black and white, originally) illustrations for Poe's tales and poems, dispersed among the ten volumes. If I guessed rightly about your volumes, the first editor and proprietor of their plates (from which came the innumerable reprints, from 1902, as rightly evoked by "Outis") seems to have been the NY Putnam (& Son's'?) one, thence the strong probability that your own "Lamb" one could be nothing more than a mere reprint. Good luck. Yours sincerely, Raven's Shade (Belgium).

-- Anonymous, June 30, 2004