The Providence Athenæum

The "Raven Bookplate" is inscribed by French author Stephane Mallarmé to the poet and former fiancée of Edgar Allan Poe, Sarah Helen Whitman.  Mallarmé was an admirer of Poe, and in 1875 he published a French translation of Poe's "The Raven”, with illustrations by Edouard Manet. By this time, Poe's reputation had suffered at the hands of his literary executor Rufus Griswold.  Whitman dedicated her later life to rehabilitating Poe’s memory, defending him in her book, Edgar Poe and His Critics, published in 1860.  

Mallarmé developed a transatlantic correspondence with Whitman.  He is known to have sent at least seven letters to Whitman, as well as copies of his translation of “The Raven”, and this bookplate inscribed by him.  In a letter from 1876 he clarified why her opinion of his work on Poe was of such importance: "Your name," he explained, "mingles with his."

The print was given to the library in 1948 by Louise B. Chace and her mother-in-law, Maud Daily Chace, who had cared for Whitman in her later years and served as the poet’s literary executors.

Lancaster, Jane. Inquire Within: A Social History of the Providence Athenæum Since 1753. Providence Athenæum, 2003, p. 171.

"Poe & Whitman." The Providence Athenæum, 2019, www.providenceathenaeum.org/about/history/poe-whitman/. Accessed 26 June 2019.

Annual Report of the Directors of the Providence Athenæum to the Proprietors. Providence, Providence Athenæum, 1948, p.9.

Robe, Margaret. “Raven Bookplate.” 2016. ARTH 401: Cataloguing Curiosity, Wheaton College, student paper.