Chronology

1809 Boston. Born January 19th.

1811 Richmond, Virginia. Poe’s mother dies in December, leaving three small children to be cared for by friends. Edgar Poe is taken into the home of John Allan, a Richmond merchant.

1815-20 London. Attends classical academies in England while Allan attends to business interests.

1820-25 Richmond. The Allans return to America in 1820. Poe attends two Richmond academies, where he excells in languages, sports, and pranks. Composes several verse satires in couplets, all now lost save “O, Tempora! O, Mores!”

1826 Charlottesville. Enters the University of Virginia, distinguishes himself in ancient and modern Romance languages; gambles away $2000. Allan refuses to pay the debt and withdraws Poe from the University.

1827-28 Boston and Charleston. Enlists in the United States Army as “Edgar A. Perry” and is assigned to Fort Independence in Boston Harbor. By summer, he sees his first work in print—a small volume of less than a dozen pieces, Tamerlane and Other Poems “By a Bostonian,” which, in addition to the title work, includes such poems as “Dreams,” “Visit of the Dead,” “Evening Star,” “Imitation” (revised as “A Dream Within A Dream”). In November 1827, Poe’s unit is transferred South.

1829 Richmond, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. In April, a few weeks after the death of Mrs. Allan, Poe leaves the Army. Finds a publisher for a slightly augmented edition of his poems in Baltimore, where he lives for awhile with relatives. In December, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems appears with a half-dozen new works added to the revised Tamerlane poems, including the ironic “Sonnet—To Science,” the burlesque “Fairy-Land,” and a verse “Preface” (later to be expanded as a serio-comic “Introduction” for the 1831 edition of poems, and yet later to be reduced as “Romance”).

1830 West Point. Enters West Point; again excells in languages. Becomes known among the cadets for his comic verses about the officers. John Allan meanwhile remarries, and discovers a letter in which Poe comments “Mr. A. is not very often sober” (dated May 3, 1830), whereupon he severs relations with Poe.

1831 New York and Baltimore. Without an allowance from Allan, Poe arranges to “disobey orders” (apparently involving nothing more than missing class and church) so as to obtain his release from the Army. Poems: Second Edition “By Edgar A. Poe” is published in New York in the spring; includes extensive revisions of “Tamerlane,” “Al Aaraaf,” and other early poems, as well as a half-dozen new poems: “To Helen,” “Israfel,” “The Doomed City” (later revised as “The City in the Sea”), “Irene” (later revised as “The Sleeper”), “A Paean” (revised as “Lenore”), and “The Valley Nis” (revised as “The Valley of Unrest”). The volume also includes a prose introduction titled “Letter to Mr.————,” which expounds a high Romantic view of art. Joins his aunt, Maria Clemm, and her daughter, Virginia, in Baltimore. Submits several tales in a contest announced by the Philadelphia Saturday Courier.

1832 Baltimore. The Courier publishes five of his satiric and burlesque tales at regular intervals from January to December: “Metzengerstein,” “The Duke de L’Omelette,” “A Tale of Jerusalem,” “A Decided Loss” (the first version of “Loss of Breath”), and “The Bargain Lost” (the first version of “Bon-Bon”).

1833-34 Baltimore. In the summer of 1833, Poe submits another group of tales in a contest sponsored by the Baltimore Saturday Visiter; these are first series of the never-published collection of parodies Poe intended to call The Tales of the Folio Club, at this time including in addition to the five Courier stories: “Some Passages in the Life of a Lion” (“Lionizing”), “The Visionary” (later revised as “The Assignation”), “Shadow,” “Epimanes” (“Four Beasts in One”), “Siope” (“Silence”), and “MS. Found in a Bottle.” “MS. Found in a Bottle” wins first prize of $50 and “The Coliseum” wins second place in the poetry competition; both are printed in the Visiter in October 1833. Sells “The Visionary” to Godey’s Lady’s Book, which appears in January 1834, Poe’s first publication in a journal of wide circulation. In March 1834, John Allan dies, in his will omitting any mention of Poe.

1835 Richmond. Becomes associated with the Messenger in March; contributes a large number of works to its pages during the year: several poems; the first part of a verse drama, Politian; and five new tales, the Gothic “Morella,” the Gothic burlesque “Berenice,” the comic “Hans Phaal,” the satiric “King Pest,” and the pseudo-Gothic “Shadow.” In addition, he writes a column on current literary events and over thirty reviews. Among the reviews is a demolition of Theodore S. Fay’s novel Norman Leslie. Such reviews, combined with his continuing attacks on the Northern “literary cliques,” begin to earn Poe the title of the “tomahawk man.” Circulation of the Messenger increases dramatically. Meanwhile, in Baltimore, Maria Clemm hints that Virginia may be taken into the home of a cousin, and Poe promptly writes to ask for Virginia’s hand in marriage. In September, he returns to Baltimore where he may have secretly married Virginia. In October, Poe brings Virginia and Mrs. Clemm to Richmond. In December, White offers Poe the editorship of the now prospering Messenger.

1836 Richmond. In May, Poe publicly marries Virginia Clemm, still not yet fourteen. His continuing labors to make the Messenger a leading critical journal are indicated by the large number of reviews he writes for it in the course of the year—over eighty. Among them is another blistering satire, the review of Morris Matson’s novel Paul Ulric; other reviews include, besides attacks on writers now forgotten, two reviews praising the earliest work of Dickens, and exercises in critical definition.

1837-38 New York and Philadelphia. Quarrels with White over his low salary in January 1837; resigns from the Messenger and takes his small family to New York. Spends the next two years free-lancing in New York and Philadelphia before finding another editorship. Publishes poems and stories, including the comic tale “Von Jung the Mystic,” the Gothic tale “Ligeia,” and the two satiric companion stories “How to Write a Blackwood Article” and “The Scythe of Time” (later retitled “A Predicament”). In July 1838, his only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, which had been published serially in the Messenger in 1837, is published in New York as a book.

1839 Philadelphia. Becomes associated with William Burton and in May becomes an associate editor of Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, contributing one signed feature each month as well as writing most of the reviews. His first contributions include the satiric tale “The Man That Was Used Up” and the Gothic tales “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “William Wilson.” Becomes involved in a dubious textbook enterprise, Wyatt’s The Conchologist’s First Book. Begins his first series of solutions to cryptograms in Alexander’s Weekly Messenger.

1840 Philadelphia. Publishes Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, reprinting twenty-four of his tales with the addition of an unpublished comic tale, “Why the Little Frenchman Wears his Hand in a Sling.” Quarrels with William Burton and is discharged. In an effort to establish his own journal, he sends out a “Prospectus for The Penn Magazine,” but does not find sufficient financial support. Publishes “Sonnet—Silence,” the satiric tale “The Businessman,” and the hoax “The Journal of Julius Rodman.” In November, Burton sells his magazine to George Graham, who unites it with his own magazine, The Casket, to form Graham’s Magazine. Despite his quarrel with Poe earlier in the year, Burton apparently recommends him to Graham, and in December Poe contributes the Gothic tale “The Man of the Crowd” to the first issue of the “new” magazine.

1841 Philadelphia. Becomes an associate editor of Graham’s. Contributes the ratiocinative story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” the Gothic adventure “A Descent Into the Maelström,” the dark idyll “The Island of the Fay,” the ironic “Colloquy of Monos and Una,” and the satiric “Never Bet the Devil Your Head.” Also continues to publish elsewhere, notably “Eleonora” in The Gift, while in the Saturday Evening Post predicting the outcome of Dickens’ Barnaby Rudge from the first installment.

1842 Philadelphia. In January, Virginia hemorrhages, the first serious sign of the illness that is to take her life in five years. Meets Dickens. Resigns from Graham’s after a quarrel over the editorship. Works on a new, two-volume collection of stories in which comic works are carefully alternated with the serious works, to be titled Phantasy-Pieces, in imitation of the German Phantasiestücke, but never published. In the fall, publishes “The Pit and the Pendulum,” “The Landscape Garden,” and “The Mystery of Marie Roget.”

1843 Philadelphia. Becomes associated with James Russell Lowell’s new magazine The Pioneer, publishing in its pages “Lenore,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” and an essay on English verse (later to become “The Rationale of Verse”). The magazine lasts for only three issues, however, and Poe again tries to establish his own independent journal, now to be called The Stylus, and again fails. In June, “The Gold Bug” wins a $100 prize in the Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper and is widely reprinted. Encouraged by the overnight success of the tale, Graham begins “publication in parts” of The Prose Romances of Edgar A. Poe, the first number containing the serious “Murders in the Rue Morgue” paired with the comic “The Man That Was Used Up.” In the fall, the Gothic tale “The Black Cat” is followed by the comic tales “The Elk” and “Diddling Considered As One of the Exact Sciences.” Begins lecture circuit in November with the “Poets and Poetry of America.”

1844 Philadelphia and New York. Continues his lectures on American poetry while contributing to a variety of magazines; notable are the comic tale “The Spectacles” and the occult “Tale of the Ragged Mountains.” Gets a job as copy editor for the New York Evening Mirror and moves his family to New York, punctuating his arrival with a successful hoax in the New York Sun about a balloon journey across the Atlantic. Continues to publish prolifically in a variety of journals; the serio-comic tales “The Premature Burial,” “Mesmeric Revelation,” and “The Oblong Box,” and the comic satire “The Angel of the Odd” are followed by the ratiocinative “Purloined Letter,” in turn followed by “‘Thou Art the Man’,” a parody of the genre of the detective story which he has just helped popularize, if not invent, over the last three years; this followed by “The Literary Life of Thingum Bob,” a satire on Graham and other editors. In December, he begins the Marginalia in the Democratic Review, a continuing series of random, brief comments, on reading, writing, and the quirks of life.

1845 New York. In January, “The Raven” appears in the Evening Mirror. Continues his lecture tour. Publishes the satiric stories “The Thousand and Second Tale of Scheherazade” and “Some Words with a Mummy,” followed by the “philosophical” tale “The Power of Words,” and the serio-comic “Imp of Perverse.” Becomes associated with the Broadway Journal. Reprints in it many of his poems and stories, as well as contributing over sixty literary essays and reviews. Begins the “Little Longfellow War,” a series of five articles accusing Longfellow, one of the most popular literary figures of the day, of plagiarism. In June, Evert Duyckinck selects twelve of Poe’s stories and publishes them through the New York firm of Wiley and Putnam as Tales. In October, continuing his lectures and readings, Poe reads “Al Aaraaf” to the Boston Lyceum as a hoax. Meanwhile, the editors of Broadway Journal had quarreled, prompting Poe to borrow heavily from friends, so that at last he finds himself, however briefly, owner and editor of his own magazine. Continues to publish in various magazines; notably the satiric tale “The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether” and the serio-comic “Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar.” At the end of the year, Wiley and Putnam brings out The Raven and Other Poems.

1846 New York. A winter illness forces Poe to cease publication of Broadway Journal, which had lost money during 1845. Contributes the serio-comic tale “The Sphinx” and the half tongue-in-cheek essay “Philosophy of Composition” to other journals. Begins in May “The Literati of New York City” in Godey’s, a series of mildly satiric sketches of well-known New York writers, including Thomas Dunn English, who replies angrily in the Evening Mirror. Poe rejoins in July, at the same time bringing suit against the Mirror, which had printed several other attacks on him. Although he is to win this libel suit next February, Godey ceases the feature with the sixth installment in November. Poe concludes the year with “The Cask of Amontillado.”

1847 New York. In January, Virginia dies, ushering in Poe’s least productive year, during which he suffers from deep depression and seeks solace in heavy drinking. All that he completes besides revised versions of the 1842 Hawthorne review and “The Landscape Garden” is two poems: one to Marie Louise Shew (“M. L. S.”), the woman who had nursed Virginia during her last illness; the other “Ulalume,” published in December.

1848 New York. In February, delivers a lecture titled “The Universe,” at the New York Society Library, an essay on the principle of death and annihilation as part of the design of the universe, which he reworks for book publication in July as Eureka. Attempts a series of romantic liaisons: with Marie Louise Shew early in the year, with Annie Richmond at midyear, and with Sarah Helen Whitman at the end of the year. Mrs. Whitman, widowed, becomes engaged to Poe briefly but breaks it off. In the fall, in deep depression, he may have taken a very large dose of laudanum. Meanwhile, “The Rationale of Verse” and the second “To Helen” (for Helen Whitman) appear. In December, reads “The Poetic Principle” as a lecture in Providence.

1849 New York, Richmond, and Baltimore. Although he continues to contribute to a variety of magazines, his main outlet is the Boston Flag of Our Union, a popular weekly. In it from March to July, he publishes three poems, including the ironic “Eldorado” and “For Annie,” and four tales, the serio-comic “Hop-Frog,” the Gold Rush hoax “Von Kempelen and His Discovery,” the satire “X-ing a Paragrab,” and the idyll “Landor’s Cottage.” Spends two months in Richmond in the summer, where he proposes to Sarah Elmira Royster Shelton, his boyhood sweetheart (now widowed), and apparently is accepted. Goes to Baltimore at the end of September, where he seems to have gone on a drinking spree. Found semi-conscious outside a polling booth on October 3rd. Dies Sunday morning, October 7th, “of congestion of the brain”—a brain lesion, perhaps complicated by intestinal inflammation, a weak heart, and diabetes. His death is followed by Griswold’s slanderous obituary notice, and by publication of two of his best loved poems, both dealing with the final triumph of death: “Annabel Lee” on October 9th, and “The Bells” early in November.