Becoming American

Edgar Allan Poe Biography

Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809 in Boston, where his mother, Elizabeth Arnold Poe, worked as an actress. His father, David Poe, Jr., was an actor from Baltimore and abandoned the family soon after Edgar was born. After Elizabeth’s death in Richmond, Virginia on December 8, 1811, Edgar was taken in by the family of John Allan, a member of the firm of Ellis and Allan, tobacco-merchants. Allan, who was presumed to be Edgar’s godfather, gave Edgar his middle name.

Poe attended schools in England and Richmond where he received a classical education. During 1826 he attended the University of Virginia, where he excelled academically but also became buried in debt, which he tried to pay off by gambling. John Allan refused to help, and Poe was forced to leave school and return to Richmond to pay off the debts. He also found his sweetheart, (Sarah) Elmira Royster, engaged to another man. Poe then went to Boston, where in 1827 he published a small work of poetry titled Tamerlane, and Other Poems and enlisted in the U.S. Army under the name Edgar A. Perry.

After two years of service, during which he was promoted to the rank of Sergeant-major, he secured, with Mr. Allan's aid, a discharge from the Army and went to Baltimore. He lived there with his aunt, Maria Poe Clemm, until he received an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1830. He was dismissed from the Academy in March 1831 after failing to attend drills and classes.

After leaving West Point, Poe released Poems by Edgar Allan Poe, Second Edition. He then returned to Baltimore, where he began to write stories. From December 1835 through January 1837, he was editor of the Southern Literary Messenger. During this time, he married his 13-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm in Richmond in May 1836.

Poe left the Messenger in 1837 and moved to New York where he published The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. In 1839 he became co-editor of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine in Philadelphia and wrote “William Wilson” and “The Fall of the House of Usher” as monthly features.

He left Burton's in1840 but returned in 1841 to edit its successor, Graham's Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine, in which he published the first detective story, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” In 1843 “The Gold-Bug” won a prize of $100 from the Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper. In 1844 Poe became subeditor of the New York Mirror, in which the critically acclaimed poem “The Raven,” was published on January 29, 1845. Poe then became editor of the weekly Broadway Journal, in which he republished most of his short stories, in 1845.

During the years Poe wrote and published most of his works, his wife’s  health slowly declined, and he often turned to alcohol to cope with her illness and his own financial difficulties. After Virginia died from tuberculosis in January 1847, Poe became even more desolate.

The following year he went to Providence, Rhode Island, to court Sarah Helen Whitman, a poet to whom he was briefly engaged. In 1849 he went back to Richmond, where he finally became engaged to his former love Elmira Royster, by then a widow. He went back to Baltimore in September of that year and on October 3, was found in a Baltimore tavern confused, his clothing torn. He lost consciousness and was brought to Washington College Hospital, where he died on October 7, 1849. The cause of Poe’s death remains a mystery. He was buried in Westminster Presbyterian churchyard in Baltimore.

Sources:

“The Big Read Reader’s Guide: The Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe”, National Endowment for the Arts.

Poe Museum: www.poemuseum.org

Biography.com: www.biography.com