Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts. He was the second child of David and Eliza Poe, both of whom were actors. Poe’s father abandoned the family shortly after Poe was born, and Poe’s mother died the next year. Poe was taken in by John and Frances Allan, who raised him and put him through secondary school and helped support him as a young adult. Poe and his foster father had a falling out over Poe’s gambling debts and failed military career after Frances Allan died, and they became estranged from one another. Determined to become a writer, Poe initially found fame as a literary critic whose opinion was almost universally respected. His poems and short stories were also popular, but the Panic of 1837 meant he was not always paid for his work and he frequently found himself living in dire poverty. Poe famously married his first cousin, Virginia Clemm, when she was 13 and he was 26 in 1835, several years before Poe’s only complete novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, was published. They remained married until Virginia’s death in 1847, after which Poe never remarried. Poe’s life was marred by an ongoing battle with alcoholism, which played a significant role in his inability to maintain a long-term job at literary magazines and newspapers and his subsequent struggle against poverty. In 1849 Poe arrived in Philadelphia sick and desperate for money to get a train ticket to Virginia. His friend George Lippard helped raise funds for his train ticket and food. A short time later, Poe was found delirious and seriously ill on the streets of Baltimore, but unable to explain why he was there or what had happened to him. He was taken to a hospital but died several days later on October 7, 1849.