Though slight in stature, he was combative and scornful; classmates declined his leadership. His friends nevertheless included Ebenezer Burling, Robert Cabell, and Robert Stanard.

At fourteen Poe turned to Jane Stith Stanard, the mother of his companion, for emotional comfort and understanding, later idealizing her in his poem “To Helen” after her sudden derangement and untimely death in 1824. Her loss intensified his own reckless impulsiveness: Not long afterward, he swam six miles in the James River against an incoming tide under a scorching sun to prove his indomitability. Hints of estrangement from his foster father lurk in Allan’s comment of 1824 that Poe “does nothing & seems quite miserable, sulky, and ill-tempered to all the family.” His lack of “affection” and “gratitude” galled Allan in light of the “care and kindness” he allegedly received. Poe fell into line—literally—when General Lafayette visited Richmond in 1824 during his American tour; the boy paraded with the junior militia that formed an honor guard for the Revolutionary hero who had known his late grandfather, Major David Poe of Baltimore. But the moodiness Allan noted was soon exacerbated by emerging romantic interests. For several years Poe had scribbled poems to local girls, and most had been bantering in tone until he met Sarah Elmira Royster in the summer of 1825. She lived opposite Moldavia, the Richmond mansion John Allan had bought that year with a huge inheritance left by an uncle, and she later recalled Poe as a “beautiful boy” with a “sad” manner who occasionally came calling with verses in hand. The two developed a mutual fondness, spoke of marriage, and remained close until Poe left Richmond to enroll in the University of Virginia early the following year.

Classes at Mr. Jefferson’s university brought Poe in contact with some of the great minds of the young republic. The author of the Declaration was (until his death on July 4 of that year) very much an intellectual presence in Charlottesville, where he shaped the curriculum; the faculty included former presidents Madison and Monroe, who examined Poe in Latin and Greek. But the students were a brawling, hot-tempered lot who sometimes settled personal differences by dueling, and Poe (lacking sufficient funds from Allan) took to gambling and drinking. He also wrote poems, concocted stories, and covered the walls of his room with charcoal sketches; a classmate described him as “excitable & restless, at times wayward, melancholic, and morose.” Examinations intimidated him, but he performed well, excelling in “ancient languages” and French. By the end of the year, however, Poe was in deep trouble: summoned to testify about student gambling, he denied involvement but privately begged Allan to cover his losses. In late December, Allan journeyed to Charlottesville, settled the debts he deemed legitimate, withdrew Poe from the university, and hauled him back to Richmond in disgrace. To complete the debacle, Poe soon learned that Miss Royster’s father, having intercepted Poe’s love letters, had compelled her to break the engagement.

A fateful clash with Allan soon ensued. Condemned to disciplinary toil in the office of Ellis and Allan, Poe accused his foster father of heartlessly “exposing” his youthful indiscretions and thus blasting his hopes for “eminence in public life.” Packing his bags and leaving Moldavia, he demanded funds to journey north to earn enough money to resume his university studies, and a few days later embarked on a perilous new life. In Baltimore he apparently visited his brother, and then he traveled on to Boston, where he assumed an alias to dodge creditors from Virginia.

In the city of his birth, Poe led a dire, hand-to-mouth existence, working first as a clerk in a mercantile store, then briefly as a market reporter for a struggling newspaper, and in May he enlisted in the army as “Edgar A. Perry.” Through relocation and travail Poe had continued to write poetry, and during the summer he found a publisher willing to print his little volume, Tamerlane and Other Poems, ascribed to “a Bostonian.” Recasting oriental legend, the exotic title poem showed the influence of Byron as Poe concocted a thinly disguised version of the cruelties that had separated him from Miss Royster. But the book received little notice. Reassigned to duty at Fort Moultrie, Poe in November boarded a brig bound for South Carolina, where he arrived eleven days later after nearly perishing in a gale off Cape Cod.

On desolate Sullivan’s Island, Poe became an artificer, maintaining the cannons and small artillery at the fort. He staved off boredom by writing verse and reading Shakespeare as well as other English poets; he also developed literary contacts in nearby Charleston, where he perhaps met writer-editor William Gilmore Simms. Military life proved irksome, however, and Poe contrived to shorten his five-year enlistment; when his unit was reassigned to Fortress Monroe, Virginia, in December 1828, he begged Allan to arrange his release even as he accused him of utter neglect. About his outsized ambition Poe defiantly boasted, “The world shall be my theatre.” A promotion to regimental sergeant-major, however, apparently inspired a different plan: While still seeking the discharge, he asked Allan to enquire about an appointment to the military academy at West Point. But in early 1829, just as Poe was refining this scheme, another blow fell: He learned that his foster mother, the sickly Frances Allan, had died of a lingering illness.

Poe reached Richmond too late to attend Mrs. Allan’s burial, but he achieved a temporary truce with Allan, who replenished Poe’s wardrobe and on his behalf contacted several men of political influence. After hiring a replacement and securing a military release on April 15, Poe carried letters from Allan to Washington and then traveled on to Baltimore, there conferring with former Richmond acquaintance William Wirt, the U.S. attorney general, who assessed his poetry and offered cautionary advice. Undaunted, Poe tracked down publishers and editors, submitting his poems to periodicals and negotiating publication of a new volume of verse. He pursued his appointment to West Point while living in cheap hotels or lodging with impoverished relatives.