Shmoop - Edgar Allan Poe
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Pity the poor biographer of Edgar Allan Poe. That maestro of the macabre rarely met a hoax or a distortion that he didn't like. Poe so thrived in the realm of the fantastic that even the basic facts of his life somehow became subject to the embellishments of his imagination. It didn't help that the first person to have a go at his biography was his literary nemesis. Shortly after Poe's death, this uber-rival published a slanderous account full of lies about the writer, who obviously couldn't do anything to defend himself, being dead and all. But even if Poe had still been around to write his own biography, it might not have been much more accurate. Poe seemed to genuinely enjoy misleading his readers, perhaps as a way of saying "Take that!" to the polite society that had so often rejected him. "The nose of a mob is its imagination," he once wrote. "By this, at any time, it can be quietly led."
Edgar Poe was born in 1809 to two impoverished parents, orphaned at the age of two, and then adopted by a man named John Allan whom he never grew to love. He was broke all his life, often begging for money that he soon spent on drink. He died penniless at the age of 40 after being found disheveled and unconscious in a Baltimore gutter. For all of his problems, in the course of his relatively short life Poe revitalized American literature, producing perfectly crafted stories and poems while creating whole new genres (we have Poe to thank for the detective story, for example). The guy who spent his life on the outside is now, a century and a half after his death, considered a member of the inner circle of American literature. It's an ironic twist that Poe himself might have approved.
"Edgar Allan Poe is dead," read the obituary. "This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it. The poet was known, personally or by reputation, in all this country; he had readers in England, and in several of the states of Continental Europe; but he had few or no friends; and the regrets for his death will be suggested principally by the consideration that in him literary art has lost one of its most brilliant but erratic stars."
That incredibly nasty appraisal ran six days after Poe was found, disheveled and unconscious, in the gutter of a Baltimore street. Poe lived, barely, for four more delirious days before dying of causes still unknown. The obituary was written by his greatest literary rival, a man named Rufus Wilmot Griswold. Griswold, not content with his handiwork in the obituary, also published a libelous Poe biography full of lies shortly after the poet's untimely death. Add all that to the tall tales that Poe told about himself during his lifetime, and you might begin to understand how Edgar Allan Poe has become, in death, one of the best-loved but least understood writers in American literature.
Poe was a master of the short story and narrative poem. He had a gift for suspense and delightfully twisted plots. But his real gift was his ability to understand that part of our psyche that craves the macabre. He could see into the darkest corners of the human mind. As a man who lived and died in poverty-and as a man whose loved ones perished one by one of consumption (a.k.a. tuberculosis)-it's possible that Poe knew those dark places so well because he had so often been there himself.
Not that Poe was all serious. He described his stories as "half banter, half satire."
Edgar Poe (the Allan came later) was born 19 January 1809 in Boston to Elizabeth Arnold Poe and David Poe, Jr. His parents were traveling actors. The family was dirt poor. By 1811, his father had abandoned the family, leaving Elizabeth Poe alone with two-year-old Edgar, his elder brother Henry, and his infant sister Rosalie. And things soon got worse. On 8 December 1811, Elizabeth Poe died of tuberculosis in Richmond, Virginia. News soon arrived that David Poe had also died of the same disease, within days of his estranged wife. The three Poe children were split up. Henry went off to live with his paternal grandparents. Rosalie was adopted by the Mackenzie family of Richmond. And Edgar was taken in by the family of John and Frances Allan, a well-to-do Richmond couple unable to have children of their own. He added his foster family's name to his own, becoming Edgar Allan Poe.
John Allan was a successful merchant, and Edgar grew up fairly comfortably. He was close to his foster mother, Frances, but never with to foster father, who always thought Edgar was a punk, shamefully ungrateful for all the couple did for him. From 1815 to 1820, the family lived in England, where young Edgar got a good education at a school outside of London. In 1824, when he was fifteen and back in Richmond, Poe penned his first poem: "Last night, with many cares and toils oppres'd,/ Weary, I laid me on a couch to rest."
Poe enrolled at the In typical fashion, Poe intentionally misstated both the date of his enrollment and the length of time he was at college. In reality, Poe was a good student with a bad gambling problem. By the end of his first semester he had run up a $2,000 debt, which John Allan refused to pay. Poe ditched both the Allans and Virginia, and headed north to live with relatives in Baltimore.
In 1827, Poe enlisted in the U.S. Army under the name "Edgar A. Perry." He did well as a soldier, rising to the rank of sergeant major. He also continued to write. A book of his poetry was published anonymously (the author being listed only as "A Bostonian"). In April 1829, he entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. A few months later, he published his second book of poetry, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems.
Poe soon realized that West Point wasn't for him. He decided to get himself kicked out of school, which he successfully accomplished by refusing to attend chapel or classes. He was court-martialed and dismissed. "The army does not suit a poor man - so I left W. Point abruptly," he later wrote, "and threw myself upon literature as a resource. I became first known to the literary world thus.".
Poe began (and finished) his career as a starving writer. Though John Allan did not respond. And when he died on 27 March 1834, Allan omitted his adopted son from his will entirely.
In December 1835, Poe was hired as the editor of the Instead, Poe got the answer he wanted; the two cousins were married in Richmond, Virginia on 16 May 1836. Some have speculated that Edgar and Virginia Poe had an unusual relationship that was more like brother and sister than a married couple, even that their marriage was never consummated. But everyone who saw them together noted that they seemed loving and affectionate with one another. Whatever the workings of their marriage, it seemed to be a happy one.
Poe continued to publish short stories and was beginning to hone his trademark style. He published a story in the Southern Literary Messenger called " he wrote. It was also one of the first of Poe's stories to feature a dead or dying young woman, a theme that would later appear frequently in his work.
In 1837, Poe moved his family (which consisted of Virginia and her mother Maria Clemm, who lived with the couple) to Philadelphia. He soon published his first and only novel, In other words, as soon as a reader sets a book aside, the effect of suspense or excitement is lost. The best stories let you keep that feeling straight through, from beginning to end.
Poe proved his theories with the 1840 publication of Of course, Poe was also describing himself.
Though he still struggled with money, things seemed to be looking up for Edgar Allan Poe. Then in January 1842, while singing at the piano, his wife Virginia began to bleed from the mouth-a symptom of tuberculosis. The dreaded disease that had killed his parents and his brother now seemed poise to strike his wife as well.
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