The Alone — Poe Dark Romanticism Journal

Poe wrote “Alone” around 1829. It wasn’t published in his lifetime — but it survived, the way lines like this always do.

Edgar Allan Poe, “Alone” (written c. 1829, published 1875)

The design reads “lov’d” — not “loved.” That’s not a typo. It’s what Poe actually wrote in 1829, reproduced in facsimile in Scribner’s Monthly in 1875, and preserved by the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore as the historical text. Modern editors modernized the spelling. We didn’t.

“And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone—”

Poe kept “Alone” to himself his entire life. Someone else kept it for him — in Lucy Holmes’s autograph album — and it wasn’t published until 26 years after he died. Some things are written not for the world but to get the thing said, at least once, to yourself. A journal is for exactly that: the writing that happens before the world sees it.

The Design

The staircase layout on a black hardcover — “And all I lov’d—” / “I lov’d” / “alone—” — each line stepping further in, the em dashes intact, the word “alone—” landing exactly where it always does: at the furthest point from where it started.

Also on the Alone Tee and Alone Mug. More Poe: Dream Within a Dream Tee and The Strangeness Tee.

About This Journal

• 5.5″ × 8.5″ hardcover — 120 lined pages, acid-free paper
• Elastic band closure, ribbon bookmark, lay-flat binding

Who It’s For

• The private writer — the person who journals because it’s the only place the thought lands correctly
• Anyone who’s written something true that they immediately knew they’d never show anyone
• The Poe reader who loves things alone and has always needed a place to put that

Write it down. Even if no one else sees it. Especially then.

Edgar Allan Poe, in Plain English

• Lived: 1809–1849, Baltimore, Richmond, Philadelphia, New York
• Worked as a magazine editor, critic, and writer — never financially stable, always brilliant at the work
• His wife Virginia Clemm died of tuberculosis in 1847; he survived her by less than three years
• “Alone” describes a way of seeing that was, from childhood, his and no one else’s — a perception he never wrote his way out of
• He was around 20 when he wrote it; it wasn’t published until he’d been dead 26 years