Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston, to Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins and David Poe, Jr., traveling stage actors. David Poe may have abandoned his young family in 1811; in any event, Eliza took Edgar and a newborn daughter to Richmond, Virginia, where on December 8 she died, possibly of pneumonia or tuberculosis. David, according to many, died two days later in Norfolk, Virginia.

A wealthy Richmond couple, John and Frances Allan, took Edgar into their home, and though the Allans never formally adopted him, in 1812 Edgar was christened as Edgar Allan Poe. John Allan provided Edgar with an excellent education, and the young man excelled in his studies. But tensions with his guardian developed as Edgar grew up. John Allan became weary of the discontented youth, whom he described as sulky and ill-tempered, and their relationship began a long decline.

In 1826 Edgar enrolled in the newly founded University of Virginia, where he studied ancient and modern languages. During his time at the university, he amassed large gambling debts, which John Allan refused to pay, deepening the rift between the two. Edgar left school and traveled to Boston, where he joined the army and published his first volume of verse, Tamerlane and Other Poems, under the pseudonym “A Bostonian.” In 1829 Edgar’s foster mother, Frances Allan, died; he returned to Richmond and reconciled with John Allan. He then obtained an early discharge from the army and applied for admission to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. While awaiting acceptance, he visited his father’s family in Baltimore, where he published Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems. Although he was an excellent cadet and a distinguished student, his time at West Point was short. Following a heated quarrel with John Allan, Edgar resolved to leave the Academy; to accomplish this, he ceased attending classes or church services. In 1831 he was dishonorably discharged; that same year his book Poems was published in New York. He returned to Baltimore, determined to be a writer, and entered a fiction contest sponsored by the Philadelphia Saturday Courier, though he did not win, the Courier published five of his stories the following year. In 1833 Edgar won another newspaper fiction contest with “MS. Found in a Bottle,” but the scant prize money did little to alleviate his financial burdens, and he tried unsuccessfully to solicit his foster father’s help. In 1834 John Allan died, leaving a large fortune, but Edgar was not named in the will.

The next year Poe returned to Richmond and assumed the editorship of the Southern Literary Messenger, in which he published his own stories and acerbic critical reviews. He married his fourteen-year-old cousin Virginia Clemm in 1836. In 1837 he left the Messenger. Barely supporting his family as an editor, Poe was nonetheless a prolific writer and critic. He enjoyed some literary success with the publication of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838) and his two-volume Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840), which included “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “William Wilson.” He worked as an editor for Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine in Philadelphia, and in 1841 he joined the editorial staff of Graham’s Magazine, which published “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” a work that heralded a new literary genre, the modern detective story. Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum” and “The Masque of Red Death” were published in 1842, followed by “The Tell-Tale Heart” in 1843. That same year Poe’s tale “The Gold-Bug” won a fiction contest sponsored by a Philadelphia newspaper, bringing him greater renown.

Poe moved his family to New York in 1844 and took an editing position with the Evening Mirror. In January 1845, his most famous poem, “The Raven,” appeared in the Mirror, propelling him into the circles of New York’s literati. But none of his successes brought him financial security or lasting happiness. In February 1845, he became editor of the new Broadway Journal; but the journal folded in 1846, and Poe’s young wife succumbed to tuberculosis in 1847. The next year Poe seemed to rally, giving lectures and courting the poet Sarah Helen Whitman, though she later broke off their engagement.

In 1849 Poe began a lecture tour to raise funds for a new magazine. On his way from Richmond to New York, he stopped in Baltimore, where he was found on the night of October 3 nearly unconscious in the street. Edgar Allan Poe died on October 7, 1849. Various accounts were given of Poe’s last days, but the cause of his death remains a mystery.