Possible Lost Verse by Poe Found

TRENTON, N.J. — A rare-book dealer from Ocean Township, N.J., has discovered a lost verse possibly composed by Edgar Allan Poe.

Don Stine found the eight-line, handwritten verse on a blank page at the front of a rare copy of Poe’s “Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque.”

Charles Hamilton, an expert on Poe’s handwriting, concluded that the lines were written in Poe’s hand. His verdict was accepted by Christie’s auction house in New York, where Stine bought the book for a client for $63,000 before discovering the verse.

But that’s still not proof Poe created the verse. It may be that he copied the work of someone else onto the page, said David Kresh, a reference specialist with the Library of Congress.

James Furqueron, director of the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, Va., said he, too, is somewhat skeptical but that “it may very well have been a poem Poe jotted down in the book. If that is the case, this individual has quite a treasure.”