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The Atlantis (excerpt)

Peter Prospero

First published 1969
Type Short Fiction
Length Novelette

Per Sam Moskowitz's foreword in The Man Who Called Himself Poe, this is from a "seventy-thousand-word Utopia titled The Atlantis which appeared in a monthly periodical, The American Museum of Science, Literature and The Arts, published in Baltimore, in the issues of September 1938 to June 1939 inclusive. ... The first four chapters of The Atlantis are reprinted here, as far as is known for the first time since their original publication ...." Regarding the identity of the author, Moskowitz notes, "Chapter 12 of Arthur Hobson Quinn's Edgar Allan Poe is devoted to itemizing the internal evidence that prompts scholars to believe that if Poe did not actually write the work in its entirety, he may have had a hand in revision because of the quantity of Poe-related subjects. ... The late authority on Edgar Allan Poe, professor Thomas Ollive Mabbott was skeptical .... It was his opinion that The Atlantis was written by Nathan Covington Brooks, one of the editors of The American Museum, and ... a very close friend, admirer, and comrade of Edgar Allan Poe."

Date Publication Publisher Type Page
1969 Cover The Man Who Called Himself Poe Doubleday Anthology 207
1970 Cover The Man Who Called Himself Poe Gollancz Anthology 207
1972 Cover A Man Called Poe Sphere Anthology