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.

The World of Edgar Allan Poe

1809Edgar Poe is born in Boston on January 19, the second child of David and Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe, both traveling stage actors. James Madison becomes the fourth president of the United States. Washington Irving publishes A History of New York... by Diedrich Knickerbocker. Charles Darwin, Abraham Lincoln, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson are born.
1810 1811Apparently deserted by her husband, Elizabeth moves to Rich mond. Her oldest son, William Henry, lives with relatives in Baltimore, Maryland. Edgar’s sister, Rosalie Poe, is born in Norfolk, Virginia. On December 8 Elizabeth Poe dies at the age of twenty-four, possibly of tuberculosis. David Poe, also ill and perhaps unaware of his wife’s death, apparently dies two days later in Norfolk. Rosalie is adopted into the home of William Mackenzie, while Edgar is taken into the household of John Allan, a wealthy tobacco merchant. His wife, Frances, who attended Elizabeth Poe’s sickbed, takes pity on the or phaned boy and convinces her husband to take the child into their home as a ward. Although they raise him as their own, the Allans never formally adopt young Edgar.
1812Edgar is baptized and, with the Allans presumably acting as his godparents, christened as Edgar Allan Poe. Charles Dick ens is born. Lord Byron publishes Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. The United States declares war on Britain.
1815Edgar moves with the Allan family to England, where, after a tour of Scotland, they settle in London. John Allan opens a London branch of his business, which soon prospers.
1816Edgar attends the London boarding school of the Misses Dubourg.