Poe, Edgar A.

8vo (7 1/2 x 4 3/4 in.; 186 x 122 mm). Publisher's tan printed wrappers; lacking rear wrapper and spine, front wrapper very skillfully restored outside of printed rule, some light soiling and damp staining with majority of text unusually clean and unfoxed, ads at rear. Modern cloth box.

BAL 16146; Grolier American 55

First edition of the "highest of high spots", second issue with the omission of the Ludwig imprint. A recently discovered Tales in wrappers. Just over a handful of  copies of the first issue in wrappers survive  (six or  seven in varying states of defect or repair). Another copy with the wrappers well preserved but bound into a later morocco binding was sold in these rooms 14 December, 2012, lot 76 ($80,000 hammer). While the first issue of Tales in any unsophisticated binding is rare,  the second issue is also distinctly scarce as the majority were bound up with copies of  The Raven and rarely appear separately. 

No other example of this issue as originally intended, as a single volume, can be found  in ABPC as having been sold in the past 30 years and certainly not one in wrappers (which is not even listed in BAL).

The birth of the detective story and the "cornerstone of cornerstones and the highest of high spots." (Queen's Quorum 1).