# About the Reading Text of “The Man That Was Used Up”

The text is an amalgam based upon the first printing in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine of August, 1839. Additions indicated by color.

Poe’s note to the printer positions this tale in the second slot for Phantasy-Pieces, coming only after “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” .

Why?

Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. Foreword Shawn Rosenheim. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1998, 338-9:

Undiscouraged by his failure to secure a publisher for his Phantasy Pieces, Poe attempted to issue his tales in pamphlet form. William H. Graham, a Philadelphia publisher, printed in 1843 The Prose Romances of Edgar A. Poe, in what was hopefully described on the title page as a “Uniform Serial Edition.” “No. 1” contained “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Man That Was Used Up.” These were the two stories which had led the Table of Contents in the Phantasy Pieces, and if the first issue had been successful, Poe would probably have proceeded in that order to continue the publication of his stories. But no further issues appeared, and the pamphlet has become one of the rarest of all Poe’s publications. The volume in the Library of Congress, which Poe gave to Francis J. Grund, the Bohemian traveller and writer upon American life, is insured for $50,000. On the same title-page on which his autograph has enhanced the present value, there is clearly printed — “Price 12½ Cents.”