WHO WAS EDGAR ALLAN POE?

Edgar Allan Poe was one of the most important and influential American writers of the 19th
century. He was the first author to try to make a professional living as a writer.

Much of Poe's work was inspired by the events that happened around him.

Literary Pioneer

Poet

His poetry alone would ensure his spot in the literary canon. Poe's notable verses range from the
early masterpiece “To Helen” to the dark, mysterious “Ulalume.” From “The Raven,” which
made him world-famous upon its publication in 1845, to “Annabel Lee,” the posthumously
published eulogy for a maiden “in a kingdom by the sea.”

Master of Macabre

Most famously, Poe completely transformed the genre of the horror story with his masterful tales
of psychological depth and insight not envisioned in the genre before his time and scarcely seen
in it since. Stories like “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” “The Pit and the
Pendulum,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” and “The Fall of the House of Usher” reveal Poe’s
talent at its height.

Pioneer of Science Fiction

He was an early pioneer in the genre of science fiction. Poe was fascinated by the science of his
time, and he often wrote stories about new inventions.

Father of the Detective Story

Poe is credited with inventing the modern detective story with “The Murders in the Rue
Morgue.” His concept of deductive reasoning, which he called "ratiocination" inspired countless
authors, most famous among them Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes.

Biography

The name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and
mysterious women who return from the dead. His works have been in print since 1827 and
include such literary classics as “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Raven,” and “The Fall of the House
of Usher.” This versatile writer’s oeuvre includes short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, a
book of scientific theory, and hundreds of essays and book reviews. He is widely acknowledged
as the inventor of the modern detective story and an innovator in the science fiction genre, but he
made his living as America’s first great literary critic and theoretician. Poe’s reputation today
rests primarily on his tales of terror as well as on his haunting lyric poetry.
Just as the bizarre characters in Poe’s stories have captured the public imagination, so too has
Poe himself. He is often seen as a morbid, mysterious figure lurking in the shadows of moonlit
cemeteries or crumbling castles. This is the Poe of legend. But much of what we know about Poe
is wrong, the product of a biography written by one of his enemies in an attempt to defame the
author’s name.

The real Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809, but within three years
both of his parents had died. Poe was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and
his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia, while his brother and sister went to live
with other families. Mr. Allan reared Poe to be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe
dreamt of emulating his childhood hero, the British poet Lord Byron. The backs of some of
Allan’s ledger sheets reveal early poetic verses scrawled in a young Poe’s handwriting and show
how little interest Edgar had in the tobacco business.

In 1826 Poe left Richmond to attend the University of Virginia, where he excelled in his classes
but accumulated considerable debt. The miserly Allan had sent Poe to college with less than a
third of the funds he needed, and Poe soon took up gambling to raise money to pay his expenses.
By the end of his first term Poe was so desperately poor that he burned his furniture to keep
warm. Humiliated by his poverty and furious with Allan, Poe was forced to drop out of school
and return to Richmond. However, matters continued to worsen. He visited the home of his
fiancée, Elmira Royster, only to discover that she had become engaged to another man.

The heartbroken Poe’s last few months in the Allan mansion were punctuated with increasing
hostility toward Allan until Poe finally stormed out of the home in a quixotic quest to become a
great poet and to find adventure. He accomplished the former by publishing his first
book Tamerlane when he was only eighteen; to achieve the latter, he enlisted in the United States
Army. Two years later he entered the United States Military Academy at West Point while
continuing to write and publish poetry. But after only eight months at West Point Poe was
thrown out.

Broke and alone, Poe turned to Baltimore—his late father’s home—and called upon relatives in
the city. One of Poe’s cousins robbed him in the night but another relative, Poe’s aunt Maria
Clemm, became a new mother to him and welcomed him into her home. Clemm’s daughter,
Virginia, first acted as a courier to carry letters to Poe’s lady loves but soon became the object of
his desire.

While Poe was in Baltimore, John Allan died, leaving Poe out of his will, which did, however,
provide for an illegitimate child whom Allan had never seen. By then Poe was living in poverty
but had started publishing his short stories, one of which won a contest sponsored by
the Saturday Visiter. The connections Poe established through the contest allowed him to publish
more stories and to eventually gain an editorial position at the Southern Literary Messenger in
Richmond. It was at this magazine that Poe finally found his life’s work as a magazine writer.

Within a year Poe helped make the Messenger the most popular magazine in the south with his
sensational stories and his scathing book reviews. Poe soon developed a reputation as a fearless
critic who not only attacked an author’s work but also insulted the author and the northern
literary establishment. Poe targeted some of the most famous writers in the country; one of his
victims was the anthologist and editor Rufus Griswold.

At the age of twenty-seven, Poe brought Maria and Virginia Clemm to Richmond and married
Virginia, who was not yet fourteen. The marriage proved a happy one but money was always
tight. Dissatisfied with his low pay and lack of editorial control at the Messenger, Poe moved to
New York City and to Philadelphia a year later, where he wrote for a number of different
magazines. In spite of his growing fame, Poe was still barely able to make a living. For the
publication of his first book of short stories, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, he was paid
with twenty-five copies of his book. He would soon become a champion for the cause of higher
wages for writers as well as for an international copyright law. To change the face of the
magazine industry, he proposed starting his own journal, but he failed to find the necessary
funding.

Elmira Royster Shelton

The January 1845 publication of “The Raven” made Poe a household name. He was again living
in New York City and was now famous enough to draw large crowds to his lectures—he also
began demanding better pay for his work. He published two books that year, and briefly lived his
dream of running his own magazine when he bought out the owners of the Broadway Journal.
The failure of the venture, his wife’s deteriorating health, and rumors spreading about Poe’s
relationship with a married woman, drove him from the city in 1846. At this time he moved to a
tiny cottage in the country. It was there, in the winter of 1847, that Virginia died of tuberculosis
at the age of twenty-four. Her death devastated Poe and left him unable to write for months. His
critics assumed he would soon be dead. They were right. Poe only lived another two years and
spent much of that time traveling from one city to the next giving lectures and finding backers
for his latest proposed magazine project to be called The Stylus.

He returned to Richmond in the summer of 1849 and reconnected with his first fiancée, Elmira
Royster Shelton who was now a widow. They became engaged and intended to marry in
Richmond after Poe’s return from a trip to Philadelphia and New York. However, on the way to
Philadelphia, Poe stopped in Baltimore and disappeared for five days. He was found in the bar
room of a public house that was being used as a polling place for an election. The magazine
editor Joseph Snodgrass sent Poe to Washington College Hospital, where Poe spent the last days
of his life far from home and surrounded by strangers. Neither Poe’s mother-in-law nor his
fiancée knew what had become of him until they read about it in the newspapers. Poe died on
October 7, 1849 at the age of forty. The exact cause of Poe’s death remains a mystery.

Days after Poe’s death, his literary rival Rufus Griswold wrote a libelous obituary of the author
in a misguided attempt at revenge for some of the offensive things Poe had said and written
about him. Griswold followed the obituary with a memoir in which he portrayed Poe as a
drunken, womanizing madman with no morals and no friends. Griswold’s attacks were meant to
cause the public to dismiss Poe and his works, but the biography had exactly the opposite effect
and instead drove the sales of Poe’s books higher than they had ever been during the author’s
lifetime. Griswold’s distorted image of Poe created the Poe legend that lives to this day while
Griswold is only remembered (if at all) as Poe’s first biographer.
https://www.poemuseum.org/poes-biography
On January 19, 1809, Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Poe's father and
mother, both professional actors, died before the poet was three years old, and John and Frances
Allan raised him as a foster child in Richmond, Virginia. John Allan, a prosperous tobacco
exporter, sent Poe to the best boarding schools and later to the University of Virginia, where Poe
excelled academically. After less than one year of school, however, he was forced to leave the
university when Allan refused to pay Poe's gambling debts.

Poe returned briefly to Richmond, but his relationship with Allan deteriorated. In 1827, he
moved to Boston and enlisted in the United States Army. His first collection of
poems, Tamerlane, and Other Poems, was published that year. In 1829, he published a second
collection entitled Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems. Neither volume received significant
critical or public attention. Following his Army service, Poe was admitted to the United States
Military Academy, but he was again forced to leave for lack of financial support. He then moved
into the home of his aunt Maria Clemm and her daughter Virginia in Baltimore, Maryland.

Poe began to sell short stories to magazines at around this time, and, in 1835, he became the
editor of the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond, where he moved with his aunt and
cousin Virginia. In 1836, he married Virginia, who was thirteen years old at the time. Over the
next ten years, Poe would edit a number of literary journals including the Burton's Gentleman's
Magazine and Graham's Magazine in Philadelphia and the Broadway Journal in New York City.
It was during these years that he established himself as a poet, a short story writer, and an editor.
He published some of his best-known stories and poems, including "The Fall of the House of
Usher," "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," and "The Raven." After
Virginia's death from tuberculosis in 1847, Poe's lifelong struggle with depression and
alcoholism worsened. He returned briefly to Richmond in 1849 and then set out for an editing
job in Philadelphia. For unknown reasons, he stopped in Baltimore. On October 3, 1849, he was
found in a state of semi-consciousness. Poe died four days later of "acute congestion of the
brain." Evidence by medical practitioners who reopened the case has shown that Poe may have
been suffering from rabies.

Poe's work as an editor, a poet, and a critic had a profound impact on American and international
literature. His stories mark him as one of the originators of both horror and detective fiction.
Many anthologies credit him as the "architect" of the modern short story. He was also one of the
first critics to focus primarily on the effect of style and structure in a literary work; as such, he
has been seen as a forerunner to the "art for art's sake" movement. French Symbolists such as
Mallarmé and Rimbaud claimed him as a literary precursor. Baudelaire spent nearly fourteen
years translating Poe into French. Today, Poe is remembered as one of the first American writers
to become a major figure in world literature.

Poetry
Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827)
Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems (1829)
Poems (1831)
The Raven and Other Poems (1845)
Eureka: A Prose Poem (1848)

Fiction

Berenice (1835)
Ligeia (1838)
The Fall of the House of Usher (1839)
Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1939)
Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841)
The Black Cat (1843)
The Tell-Tale Heart (1843)
The Purloined Letter (1845)
The Cask of Amontillado (1846)
The Oval Portrait (1850)
The Narrative of Arthut Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1850)

https://poets.org/poet/edgar-allan-poe

Edgar Allan Poe, 1809–1849

1848 "Ultima Thule" daguerreotype of Poe | Source

From Deep Within
One of the greatest poets was Edgar Allan Poe. His loves and his sorrows were deeply rooted in
his poetry. His poems are timeless, for they touch a part of the human soul in each of us that is
often hidden from others. He had the ability to open his heart and soul and share the torment and
sufferings he himself had gone through. He was a master at reaching out to awaken the deepest
emotions in others by shedding light on his own sorrows. Poe expressed the deepest love and
deeper sorrows that was very much a part of himself.
Poe went deep within when writing -- he could portray in words the abstract taken from common
feelings and turn them into intense emotions. He had the innate inclination to lean towards the
stillness of the night in his themes. In most of what he wrote there were undertones of demoniac
nature. He seemed possessed by his own demons, and it is almost as if he had to put them on
paper in order to relieve them from his mind.

"Alone" excerpt:
From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
— Edgar Allen Poe

Romantic era
Edgar Allan Poe was born in 1809, at a time when poetry was entering into Romanticism, or the
Romantic Era. Romanticism went beyond the rational and classic ideal and reached out to revive
the belief system characteristic of the Middle Ages. It was a time of devotion to Medievalism,
that romantic era of deep emotional upheavals.
This Romanticism placed emphasis on strong emotions such as trepidation, horror,and terror. It
confronted the awe inspiring spirituality of nature in it's untamed form.
Poe went beyond the norm and expressed his thoughts from inspiration. It was the inspiration of
his own emotions that compelled him to write such dark poetry that struck a cord in the human
soul -- yet it was beautiful in its darkness, for it was like a spark of light that exploded when his
words were read.
Plaque Showing Birthplace of Poe

Birth place plaque. | Source

Abandoned and Orphaned

Poe was orphaned at an early age. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts and given the name
Edgar Poe. His father abandoned him and his mother when Poe was quite young. Shortly after
that his mother died. A family in Richmond, Virginia, John and Frances Allan, took the young
boy and raised him. When older, Poe attended the University of Virginia for just one semester.
There was not enough money to allow him to continue at the University.
He enlisted in the army, but failed as a cadet at West Point. It was then he left the Allan family
and went his own way. Poe still had family on his father's side and lived with them off and on
over the years.
In 1827 he had written some poems and published them as 'Tamerlane and Other Poems'. He did
this anonymously, just signing as "A Bostonian". He then began to write prose and worked on
literary journals and periodicals over the next several years. He became known for his own
unique style of literary criticism. He moved around, working between several cities, Baltimore,
Philadelphia, New York, and others.
In 1833 Poe joined the household of his Aunt Maria in Baltimore. Maria's mother, Elizabeth, and
two of her children, Virginia and Henry lived with her. Poe had first met Virginia in 1829 when
she was just seven. Poe lived with them for about two years, leaving in 1835. During the time he
was there, he had become smitten with Mary Devereaux, a neighbor. Little Virginia became their
messenger and carried notes back and forth.
Virginia Eliza Clem
It was during these few years that Poe fell in love with Virginia and must have made it known to
Maria. Neilson Poe, Maria's brother-in-law, had heard that Poe had been considering marrying
Virginia. Neilson offered to take Virginia and have her educated. This suggestion was to prevent
the marriage since Virginia was so young.
Maria's family became destitute after the death of her mother. It is possible that Neilson was also
trying to help out financially by taking Virginia. Poe felt that Neilson was only trying to sever
the connection between himself and Virginia. Poe left the family in August of 1835 and moved
to Richmond, Virginia where he took a job at the Southern Literary Messenger.
Edgar was tormented with the thought of having Virginia torn from his life. He wrote a letter to
Maria that expressed his deep emotions and declared he was "blinded with tears while writing".
He was confident with his job and offered to provide for Maria, Virginia, and Henry, if they
would come to Richmond and live with him.
On September 22, 1835, with Maria's consent, Edgar returned to Baltimore and filed for a
marriage license. On May 16, 1836, Poe and Virginia Eliza Clemm were married. Poe was 27
and Virginia, 13. It was not unusual in those times for first cousins to marry, but it was most
unusual that a thirteen year old girl was married. However, her age on the license was falsified as
being older. Many say that Poe and Virginia lived like brother and sister for several years before
the marriage was consummated. He often called Virginia, Sis, or Sissy.
Regardless of what their marital status was during the first few years, the two were very devoted
to each other and quite happy with their life.
George Rex Graham, one of Poe's employers, had written of the couple, "His love for his wife
was a sort of rapturous worship of the spirit of beauty." In a letter to a friend of his, Poe had
written, "I see no one among the living as beautiful as my little wife." It seemed by those who
knew them that Virginia idolized her husband. She was rarely far from his side at home. She
loved to sit near him as he wrote. Virginia wrote an acrostic poem on February 14, 1876. It is as
beautiful in its loving devotion and simplicity as Edgar's poems were in sorrowful and intense
emotion.
It is believed by some that the line "And the tattling of many tongues" in Virginia's poem was in
reference to flirtations between a married woman, Frances Osgood, and Poe. This did not seem
to mar their marriage.
Virginia seemed to have even encouraged the friendship between Poe and Osgood. She often
invited Frances Osgood to their home. It seems that Edgar drank quite a lot, but was never
intoxicated in the presence of Osgood. Virginia may have believed that Osgood had a calming
effect on Edgar and this would help him to give up any overindulgence in alcohol.
Many embellished rumors floated around about Poe and Osgood and the effect on Virginia was
very disturbing. The rumors eventually faded away when Frances Osgood and her husband
reunited.

Ever with thee I wish to roam —

Dearest my life is thine.
Give me a cottage for my home
And a rich old cypress vine,
Removed from the world with its sin and care
And the tattling of many tongues.
Love alone shall guide us when we are there —
Love shall heal my weakened lungs;
And Oh, the tranquil hours we'll spend,
Never wishing that others may see!
Perfect ease we'll enjoy, without thinking to lend
Ourselves to the world and its glee —
Ever peaceful and blissful we'll be
— Virginia Eliza Poe
Francis Sargent Osgood, 1811–1850

Engraving of Frances Osgood from her 1850 collection of poetry | Source

Cottage in the Bronx

Cottage where Edgar, Virginia and Marie lived. Virginia died in this cottage. | Source
Illness and Agony
It was around this time that Virginia became ill. She was diagnosed with tuberculosis in January
of 1842. Her health declined rapidly and she soon became an invalid. Sometimes there was hope,
because Virginia would show signs of improvement, but then slipped back down. Edgar was
suffering from deep depression over this.
Poe, in a letter to a friend, John Ingram, wrote:

Each time I felt all the agonies of her death --and at each accession of the disorder I loved her
more dearly & clung to her life with more desperate pertinacity. But I am constitutionally
sensitive, nervous in a very unusual degree. I became insane, with long intervals of horrible
sanity.
— Edgar Allan Poe
Forgetfulness With Insanity
The periods of insanity were a place where Poe could forget, or at least deny. It was much too
difficult for him to face reality -- insanity was his only escape and maybe he found some peace
there.
Hoping to find an environment that would improve Virginia's health, Poe and Maria decided to
take Virginia and move outside the city to Fordham, just fourteen miles away. They moved into a
small cottage. In a letter dated June 12, 1846, Edgar wrote to Virginia, "Keep up your heart in all
hopelessness, and trust yet a little longer." Referring to his loss of the Broadway Journal, the
only magazine he ever owned, he wrote "I should have lost my courage but for you, my darling
little wife, you are my greatest and only stimulus now to battle with this uncongenial,
unsatisfactory and ungrateful life."
Virginia continued to decline and by November of that year her condition was termed hopeless.
A friend of Poe's, Nathaniel Parker Willis, an influential editor, published an announcement of
the Poe family sufferings and asked the public for help in donations. His December 30, 1846
publication read:

Illness of Edgar A. Poe. We regret to learn that this gentleman and his wife are both dangerously
ill with the consumption, and that the hand of misfortune lies heavily on their temporal affairs.
We are sorry to mention the fact that they are so far reduced as to be barely able to obtain the
necessaries of life. That is, indeed, a hard lot, and we do hope that the friends and admirers of
Mr. Poe will come promptly to his assistance in his bitterest hour of need.
— Nathaniel Parker Willis

Console Poor Eddy

Although he did not have all the facts straight, he did have compassion for the family. He was
one of Poe's greatest supporters during this time. Poe was bereft and needed such friends.
As Virginia lay dying, she asked her mother,
"Darling... will you console and take care of my poor Eddy. You will never never leave him?"
Poe sent a letter to Marie Louise Shew, a close friend of the family, on January 29, 1847. He
wrote, "My poor Virginia still lives, although failing fast and now suffering much pain." Virginia
died the next day. She had been suffering from the illness for five years. Knowing how destitute
the family
Virginia Eliza Clem Poe, 1822–1847

Virginia Eliza Clem Poe portrait in death, possibly painted by Marie Louise Shew, a good friend
of Edgar and Virginia. | Source
Portrait of Beauty in Death
Just a few hours after Virginia's spirit had departed, Edgar realized he had no image of his
beloved wife. He commissioned an artist to paint her portrait in watercolor. Marie Shew dressed
Virginia in a beautiful fine linen robe and it was from this lifeless body of a model that the
portrait was painted. It is believed that Marie Shew may have painted the portrait herself.
Virginia was buried in the vault of the Valentine family, landlord of the Poe's.
The effect of Virginia's death was devastating for Poe. He no longer seemed to care if he lived or
died. For several months he was deeply depressed. One year after her death Poe wrote to a friend
that he had experienced the greatest evil a man can suffer when, he said,
"...a wife, whom I loved as no man ever loved before, had fallen ill."
Poe referred to his emotional response to his wife's sickness as his own illness, and that he found
the cure to it
"...in the death of my wife. This I can & do endure as becomes a man -- it was the horrible never-
ending oscillation between hope & despair which I could not longer have endured without the
total loss of reason."
Edgar would visit Virginia's grave often. As his friend Charles Chauncey Burr wrote, "Many
times, after the death of his beloved wife, was he found at the dead hour of a winter night, sitting
beside her tomb almost frozen in the snow".
Poe eventually began seeing other women, but as his old friend, Frances Osgood believed,
Virginia was the only woman he ever loved. He continued writing and Virginia was often
portrayed in his prose and poetry. The beautiful yet sorrowful poem, Annabel Lee, is a heart-
rending example of Poe's suffering for his lost love. Many scholars believe that Virginia and
their deep love for each other was an inspiration for many of Edgar's poems.
Possible Inspirations
Sarah Elmira Royster was another love of Poe's in his earlier life. They were sweethearts in
1825, she was 15 and Poe was 16 at the time. Sarah's father did not approve of the relationship
and put a stop to it when Poe was attending the University of Virginia. Royston intercepted Poe's
letters to Sarah and destroyed them. Sarah married Alexander Shelton, a wealthy man, when she
was 17. Sarah and Alexander had four children -- only two survived.
In 1848, when Poe began to come out of the depression after Virginia died, he and Sarah came
back into each other's life and once again became close. Poe wanted to marry her, but, Sarah's
children disapproved, just as her father had, because of Poe's financial status and orphaned
childhood. Once again, Sarah listened to her family, not her heart, and rejected Poe.
It is believed that Sarah may also have been an inspiration for Poe's poetry expressing the pain of
lost love.
There was one other love after Virginia’s death -- possibly only a sweet diversion for Poe as a
way to find some sense of happiness. Poe had a brief courtship with Sarah Helen Whitman of
Providence, Rhode Island. Sarah was also a poet. She had become fascinated with Poe’s
darkness which at first filled her with horror. However, Sarah’s mother intervened and prevented
any further relationship between Sarah and Poe.

Edgar Allan Poe Grave

Grave where Edgar, Virginia, and Marie are buried | Source

Lost and Alone in the Final Hour

Virginia's mother, Maria, kept her promise to her daughter and stayed with Poe until his own
death in 1849.
Edgar Allan Poe died on October 7, 1849. He was 40 years old. In his short life, he penned the
beauty and tragedy of love that still pulls at the heart and emotions of all who appreciate poetry.
The causes of his death and the circumstances leading up to it have remained mysterious and
suspicious. On October 3, Poe was found delirious on the streets of Baltimore, Maryland, "in
great distress, and ... in need of immediate assistance", according to the man who found him,
Joseph W. Walker. He was taken to the Washington College Hospital, where he died at 5 a.m. on
Sunday, October 7. Poe was never coherent enough to explain how he came to be in this
condition.
One theory is that Poe was a victim of cooping. He was at the time wearing clothes that did not
belong to him. The night before he died he kept repeating the name "Reynolds". Poe was found
on an election day. Cooping was a practice by which unwilling participants were forced to vote,
often several times over, for a particular candidate in an election by means of changing clothes
each time that person is taken to a different voting booth. Copious amounts of alcohol
consumption was often involved.
Poe was lost and alone in his final hour. But, do not grieve -- Poe lies by his beloved Virginia
and Virginia's mother, Maria. In spirit they are together again at last -- Poe and his beautiful
darling, his life, his bride, are once again side by side.
https://owlcation.com/humanities/Deepest-Love-and-Deeper-Sorrows

Edgar Allan Poe Biography

(1809–1849)
Edgar Allan Poe was a writer and critic famous for his dark, mysterious poems and stories,
including ‘The Raven,’ ‘The Black Cat’ and ‘The Tell-Tale Heart.’

Who Was Edgar Allan Poe?

Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, poet, critic and editor best known for evocative short
stories and poems that captured the imagination and interest of readers around the world. His
imaginative storytelling and tales of mystery and horror gave birth to the modern detective story.

Many of Poe’s works, including “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Fall of the House of Usher,”
became literary classics. Some aspects of Poe’s life, like his literature, is shrouded in mystery,
and the lines between fact and fiction have been blurred substantially since his death.

Early Life and Family

Poe was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston, Massachusetts.

Poe never really knew his parents — Elizabeth Arnold Poe, a British actress, and David Poe, Jr.,
an actor who was born in Baltimore. His father left the family early in Poe's life, and his mother
passed away from tuberculosis when he was only three.
Separated from his brother William and sister Rosalie, Poe went to live with John and Frances
Allan, a successful tobacco merchant and his wife, in Richmond, Virginia. Edgar and Frances
seemed to form a bond, but he had a more difficult relationship with John Allan.

By the age of 13, Poe was a prolific poet, but his literary talents were discouraged by his
headmaster and John Allan, who preferred that Poe follow him in the family business. Preferring
poetry over profits, Poe reportedly wrote poems on the back of some of Allan's business papers.

Money was also an issue between Poe and John Allan. Poe went to the University of Virginia in
1826, where he excelled in his classes. However, he didn't receive enough funds from Allan to
cover all of his costs. Poe turned to gambling to cover the difference, but ended up in debt.

He returned home only to face another personal setback — his neighbor and fiancée Sarah
Elmira Royster had become engaged to someone else. Heartbroken and frustrated, Poe moved to
Boston.

Army and West Point

In 1827, around the time he published his first book, Poe joined the U.S. Army. Two years later,
he learned that Frances Allan was dying of tuberculosis, but by the time he returned to Richmond
she had already passed away.

While in Virginia, Poe and Allan briefly made peace with each other, and Allan helped Poe get
an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point. Poe excelled at his studies
at West Point, but he was kicked out after a year for his poor handling of his duties.

During his time at West Point, Poe had fought with his foster father, who had remarried without
telling him. Some have speculated that Poe intentionally sought to be expelled to spite Allan,
who eventually cut ties with Poe.

Editor, Critic, Poet and Writer

After leaving West Point, Poe published his third book and focused on writing full-time. He
traveled around in search of opportunity, living in New York City, Baltimore, Philadelphia and
Richmond. In 1834, John Allan died, leaving Poe out of his will, but providing for an illegitimate
child Allan had never met.

Poe, who continued to struggle living in poverty, got a break when one of his short stories won a
contest in the Baltimore Saturday Visiter. He began to publish more short stories and in 1835
landed an editorial position with the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond.
Poe developed a reputation as a cut-throat critic, writing vicious reviews of his contemporaries.
His scathing critiques earned him the nickname the "Tomahawk Man."

His tenure at the magazine proved short. Poe's aggressive-reviewing style and sometimes
combative personality strained his relationship with the publication, and he left the magazine in
1837. His problems with alcohol also played a role in his departure, according to some reports.

Poe went on to brief stints at Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, Graham's Magazine, The
Broadway Journal, and he also sold his work to Alexander’s Weekly Messenger, among other
journals.

In 1844, Poe moved to New York City. There, he published a news story in The New York
Sun about a balloon trip across the Atlantic Ocean that he later revealed to be a hoax. His stunt
grabbed attention, but it was his publication of "The Raven," in 1845, which made Poe a literary
sensation.

That same year, Poe found himself under attack for his stinging criticisms of fellow poet Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow. Poe claimed that Longfellow, a widely popular literary figure, was a
plagiarist, which resulted in a backlash against Poe.

Despite his success and popularity as a writer, Poe continued to struggle financially and he
advocated for higher wages for writers and an international copyright law.

Wife

From 1831 to 1835, Poe lived in Baltimore, where his father was born, with his aunt Maria
Clemm and her daughter, his cousin Virginia. He began to devote his attention to Virginia, who
became his literary inspiration as well as his love interest.

The couple married in 1836 when she was only 13 years old. In 1847, at the age of 24 — the
same age when Poe’s mother and brother also died — Virginia passed away from tuberculosis.

Poe was overcome by grief following her death, and although he continued to work, he suffered
from poor health and struggled financially until his death in 1849.

Edgar Allan Poe: Poems

Poe self-published his first book, Tamerlane and Other Poems, in 1827. His second poetry
collection, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems, was published in 1829.
As a critic at the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond from 1835 to 1837, Poe published
some of his own works in the magazine, including two parts of his only novel, The Narrative of
Arthur Gordon Pym.

Short Stories

In late 1830s, Poe published Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, a collection of short stories.
It contained several of his most spine-tingling tales, including "The Fall of the House of Usher,"
"Ligeia" and "William Wilson."

In 1841, Poe launched the new genre of detective fiction with "The Murders in the Rue Morgue."
His literary innovations earned him the nickname "Father of the Detective Story." A writer on
the rise, he won a literary prize in 1843 for "The Gold Bug," a suspenseful tale of secret codes
and hunting treasure.

'The Black Cat'

Poe’s short story “The Black Cat” was published in 1843 in The Saturday Evening Post. In it, the
narrator, a one-time animal lover, becomes an alcoholic who begins abusing his wife and black
cat. By the macabre story’s end, the narrator observes his own descent into madness as he kills
his wife, a crime his black cat reports to the police. The story was later included in the 1845 short
story collection, Tales by Edgar Allan Poe.

'The Raven'

Poe’s poem "The Raven," published in 1845 in the New York Evening Mirror, is considered
among the best-known poems in American literature and one of the best of Poe's career. An
unknown narrator laments the demise of his great love Lenore and is visited by a raven, who
insistently repeats one word: “Nevermore.” In the work, which consists of 18 six-line stanzas,
Poe explored some of his common themes — death and loss.

'Annabel Lee'

This lyric poem again explores Poe’s themes of death and loss and may have been written in
memory of his beloved wife Virginia, who died two years prior. The poem was published on
October 9, 1849, two days after Poe’s death, in the New York Tribune.

Later in his career, Poe continued to work in different forms, examining his own methodology
and writing in general in several essays, including "The Philosophy of Composition," "The
Poetic Principle" and "The Rationale of Verse." He also produced the thrilling tale, "The Cask of
Amontillado," and poems such as "Ulalume" and "The Bells."
Death

Poe died on October 7, 1849. His final days remain somewhat of a mystery. Poe left Richmond
on September 27, 1849, and was supposedly on his way to Philadelphia.

On October 3, he was found in Baltimore in great distress. Poe was taken to Washington College
Hospital, where he died four days later. His last words were "Lord, help my poor soul."

At the time, it was said that Poe died of "congestion of the brain." But his actual cause of death
has been the subject of endless speculation.

Some experts believe that alcoholism led to his demise while others offer up alternative
theories. Rabies, epilepsy and carbon monoxide poisoning are just some of the conditions
thought to have led to the great writer's death.

Legacy

Shortly after his passing, Poe's reputation was badly damaged by his literary adversary Rufus
Griswold. Griswold, who had been sharply criticized by Poe, took his revenge in his obituary of
Poe, portraying the gifted yet troubled writer as a mentally deranged drunkard and womanizer.

He also penned the first biography of Poe, which helped cement some of these misconceptions in
the public's minds.

While he never had financial success in his lifetime, Poe has become one of America's most
enduring writers. His works are as compelling today as they were more than a century ago.

An innovative and imaginative thinker, Poe crafted stories and poems that still shock, surprise
and move modern readers. His dark work influenced writers including Charles
Baudelaire, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Stephane Mallarme.

Edgar Allan Poe: House and Museum

The Baltimore home where Poe stayed from 1831 to 1835 with his aunt Maria Clemm and her
daughter, Poe’s cousin and future wife Virginia, is now a museum.
The Edgar Allan Poe House offers a self-guided tour featuring exhibits on Poe’s foster parents,
his life and death in Baltimore and the poems and short stories he wrote while living there, as
well as memorabilia including his chair and desk.

https://www.biography.com/writer/edgar-allan-poe

THE RAVEN PLOT

Edgar Allan Poe's poem The Raven is considered a classic of gothic literature. A man, probably
of middle age, sits alone in his well-adorned library one cold, "bleak December" evening, and
contemplates the dissolution of his relationship with "the lost Lenore." He is clearly
heartbroken, but becomes uneasy when a mysterious tapping on his chamber door captures his
attention. Attempting to ignore it, the unidentified source of the unwelcome noise continues to
distract him. As he focuses on the possible nature of this disturbance, his mind goes back to the
source of his sorrow, "the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore." Poe's poem
continues with its haunting theme, the narrator unable to grasp the meaning of this persistent
intruder:

"Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming
dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before; But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness
gave no token, And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore!” This I
whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”— Merely this and nothing more."

The intruder, of course, is a large black raven, which moves about the library, responding to the
narrator's queries regarding its purpose with the phrase "Nevermore." The raven's continued
presence and repetitive use of that phrase proves increasingly maddening to the narrator, who
only wants the large bird to leave. As the bird perches atop a bust of the mythological figure of
Pallas, the reader is left to conclude that this bizarre interloper signifies the narrator's emotional
demise.
https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/plot-raven-9987