Begins to seek a political post under President John Tyler.

1842

In January Virginia ruptures a blood vessel while singing. After increasing the circulation sevenfold, Poe resigns from Graham’s in April, but publishes there the following month ‘The Masque of the Red Death’ and his first review of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Money problems and Virginia’s continued ill health lead to increased drinking by the end of the year.

1843

His political hopes dashed, Poe tries to extend his literary influence, reviving his prospectus for a journal, now called The Stylus, and publishing ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ with the Bostonian James Russell Lowell. In June he publishes his prize-winning ‘The Gold-Bug’, one of the most internationally popular stories ever written. In November begins to lecture on ‘The Poetry of America’.

1844

In April moves with Virginia and her mother to New York, where he publishes ephemera in the Evening Mirror and the Democratic Review. In September publishes ‘The Purloined Letter’.

1845

In January publishes in the Mirror ‘The Raven’, an immediate popular success. In March becomes co-editor of Broadway Journal, where he reprints earlier work and resumes his attacks on Longfellow’s ‘plagiarisms’. In June Wiley and Putnam issues a new edition of the Tales. In October he takes ownership of the Journal and reads ‘Al Aaraaf’ at the Boston Lyceum without success. In November Wiley issues The Raven and Other Poems.

1846

In January the Journal folds. Publishes ‘The Philosophy of Composition’ in April. Moves his family to Turtle Bay, Manhattan, and then in May to nearby Fordham. Between May and October publishes controversial ‘Literati’ sketches, which result in slanders against Poe.

1847

Virginia dies, 29 January. In February Poe wins libel suit. In December publishes ‘Ulalume’.

1848

In February lectures on ‘The Universe’, published in May as Eureka. Courts various women, including his childhood sweetheart Elmira Royster Shelton.

1849

In August and September lectures in Richmond and becomes engaged to Shelton. Dies in Baltimore on 7 October.

SELECTED TALES

MS. FOUND IN A BOTTLE

      Qui n’a plus qu’un moment à vivre

N’a plus rien à dissimuler.

Quinault Atys*

OF my country and of my family I have little to say. Ill usage and length of years have driven me from the one, and estranged me from the other. Hereditary wealth afforded me an education of no common order, and a contemplative turn of mind enabled me to methodise the stores which early study very diligently garnered up. Beyond all things, the works of the German moralists gave me great delight; not from any ill-advised admiration of their eloquent madness, but from the ease with which my habits of rigid thought enabled me to detect their falsities. I have often been reproached with the aridity of my genius; a deficiency of imagination has been imputed to me as a crime; and the Pyrrhonism of my opinions has at all times rendered me notorious. Indeed, a strong relish for physical philosophy has, I fear, tinctured my mind with a very common error of this age—I mean the habit of referring occurrences, even the least susceptible of such reference, to the principles of that science. Upon the whole, no person could be less liable than myself to be led away from the severe precincts of truth by the ignes fatui of superstition. I have thought proper to premise thus much, lest the incredible tale I have to tell should be considered rather the raving of a crude imagination, than the positive experience of a mind to which the reveries of fancy have been a dead letter and a nullity.

After many years spent in foreign travel, I sailed in the year 18—, from the port of Batavia, in the rich and populous island of Java, on a voyage to the Archipelago of the Sunda islands. I went as passenger—having no other inducement than a kind of nervous restlessness which haunted me as a fiend.

Our vessel was a beautiful ship of about four hundred tons, copper-fastened, and built at Bombay of Malabar teak. She was freighted with cotton-wool and oil, from the Lachadive islands. We had also on board coir, jaggeree, ghee, cocoa-nuts, and a few cases of opium. The stowage was clumsily done, and the vessel consequently crank.

We got under way with a mere breath of wind, and for many days stood along the eastern coast of Java, without any other incident to beguile the monotony of our course than the occasional meeting with some of the small grabs of the Archipelago to which we were bound.*

One evening, leaning over the taffrail, I observed a very singular, isolated cloud, to the N.W. It was remarkable, as well for its color, as from its being the first we had seen since our departure from Batavia.