A reviewer in Alexander’s Weekly Messenger declared that Poe had “placed himself in the foremost rank of American writers” with his Tales. Poe reciprocated by contributing short articles to the Philadelphia newspaper and by promising, as an intellectual exhibition, to solve any cryptograms sent to him. He simultaneously prepared for Burton’s a serialized (and heavily plagiarized) narrative about Western exploration called The Journal of Julius Rodman. As a writer enamored of “the foreign subject” Poe must have resented Burton’s announcement of a $1000 literary contest that included $250 for five tales illustrating different eras in American history or portraying U.S. regional differences. His contempt for Burton prompted him to tell a friend: “As soon as Fate allows I will have a magazine of my own—and will endeavor to kick up a dust.”

That idea became increasingly irresistible. In 1840, as Rodman’s apocryphal journal was unfolding in monthly installments and as Poe unscrambled cryptograms for Alexander’s, he also devised a plan to start his own periodical. In Burton’s he decided to play the literary sleuth by accusing Harvard professor Henry Wadsworth Longfellow of plagiarizing from Tennyson. Poe also published a fine new poem of his own, “Sonnet—To Silence,” as well as “Peter Pendulum, the Business Man,” a biting satire perhaps aimed obliquely at Burton but more obviously targeting American commercial greed. In March, Burton lamely reneged on the announced premiums for original works, and two months later, intent on building a new theater, he prepared to sell his journal. Poe seized the moment to print a prospectus for his own periodical, to be called the Penn Magazine, but when Burton saw the circular, he accused Poe of disloyalty, fired him, and demanded repayment of money already advanced. The dismissal provoked a blazing reply in which Poe warned Burton, “If by accident you have taken it into your head that I am to be insulted with impunity I can only assume that you are an ass.”

Out of work, Poe enlisted contributors and subscribers for his proposed journal, which he envisioned as having a “lasting effect upon the growing literature of the country.” He found a new ally in Frederick W. Thomas, a Cincinnati novelist and Whig partisan who campaigned in Philadelphia for presidential candidate William Henry Harrison. Another sympathetic figure was George Graham, who edited the Saturday Evening Post, owned The Casket, and in October acquired Burton’s. Graham generously lauded Poe’s plans for the Penn, and when illness forced Poe to postpone the project, Graham solicited his work for his amalgamated monthly, Graham’s Magazine. In the first issue, Poe’s “The Man of the Crowd” signaled the beginning of an important connection with Graham, for when a bank crisis in early 1841 forced another delay in the Penn, Poe gratefully assumed responsibility for book reviews in Graham’s at an annual salary of eight hundred dollars. But the monthly also provided a venue for new tales: developing the city mysteries premise of “The Man of the Crowd,” he invented the modern detective story in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” in April, and the following month published “A Descent into the Maelström.” Poe also contributed a series on cryptography, “A Few Words on Secret Writing,” that grew from his writing for Alexander’s.

Convincing Graham that they could together create a prestigious, high-quality monthly featuring American writers exclusively, Poe began in June 1841 to solicit contributions from notable authors—Irving, Kennedy, the poet Fitz-Greene Halleck, and even the much abused Longfellow. But privately he admitted to Thomas his growing irritation with Graham, and for the next two years pursued a clerkship in the administration of President John Tyler, successor to Harrison (who died soon after his inauguration). Poe was disillusioned by the absence of an international copyright law to protect the work of American authors and to prevent U.S. publishers from selling “pirated” English works. He was also appalled by the “namby-pamby” character of Graham’s, which added fashion plates and—at the end of 1841—two female editors to a staff that already included Charles Peterson. Poe nevertheless claimed responsibility for the journal’s commercial success and continued to write reviews, read proofs, and contribute tales (such as “Never Bet the Devil Your Head”) as well as a new series on handwriting called “Autography.” He also wrote an “Exordium to Critical Notices” questioning the campaign for “national literature” while warning of America’s “degrading imitation” of British culture. But in January 1842, a devastating event destroyed Poe’s tranquil home life: His young wife (then only nineteen) suffered a massive pulmonary hemorrhage while singing at the piano. “Dangerously ill” for weeks, she seemed to recover, yet relapses confirmed that Virginia, like Poe’s mother, had been stricken with consumption.

Vacillating between denial and anger, Poe sought forgetfulness in drink; sometimes absent from work, he quarreled with Graham about money. He still pursued the dream of a magazine of his own, urging Thomas to propose to President Tyler a journal edited by Poe that might “play an important part in the politics of the day.” When not overwrought, he carried out assignments for Graham’s, interviewing Charles Dickens in Philadelphia in March and producing for the May issue the famous review of Hawthorne that enunciated Poe’s theory of the tale based on unity of effect. He also published two stories betraying domestic anxieties: “The Oval Portrait,” which depicts an artist too busy to notice that his wife is dying, and “The Masque of the Red Death,” which represents fatal contagion as an unexpected intruder.

But another interloper, a fifth editorial associate added by Graham—Reverend Rufus W. Griswold—apparently precipitated Poe’s departure from the magazine staff. Griswold had included Poe’s work in his Poets and Poetry of America, the first comprehensive anthology of its kind, and Poe and Griswold expressed mutual cordiality but privately despised each other. At Griswold’s hiring, Poe abruptly resigned, claiming that the magazine’s feminized content—“the contemptible pictures, fashion-plates, music and love tales”—had motivated his departure, but he plainly refused to work with Griswold and saw his arrival as a threat to his own editorial influence.

Without steady income, Poe resumed old quests and cultivated new connections. Thomas spoke of an impending appointment at the Philadelphia Custom House, but Poe nevertheless visited New York seeking an editorial position—though inebriation undermined his efforts there.