Biography of Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19th, 1809, to actors David and Eliza Poe.  David Poe soon abandons his family, including his wife, Edgar, and his two other children.  When Edgar’s mother dies in 1811 he is taken in by the Allans.  This is where Mr. Poe came by his middle name, Allan.  Though he was never officially adopted he was provided with a quality education and care.  Between 1815 and 1820, Poe attends school in London.

Poe returns to America is in 1825 he is secretly engaged to Sarah Elmira Royster.  In 1826, Poe enrolls at the University of Virginia.  He begins to gamble quite frequently in order to obtain enough money for his college tuition, yet in two years he loses about two thousand dollars.  In 1827, Mr. Allan refused to help Poe pay for college.  Poe then left home and enlisted in a five year term in the U.S. army.

In 1827, Poe used his own money to publish Tamerlane and Other Poems, which was a failure.  Poe joined Westpoint Academy for two years but dropped out after he realized that he would never gain Mr. Allan’s approval or money concerning his writing.  After refusing to continue in the army, Mr. Allan and Mr. Poe had a disastrous quarrel, after which Poe moved out to live with his Aunt Clemm and his seven-year-old cousin Virginia.  In 1836 Poe married his cousin Virginia, who, at the time, was thirteen, while he was twenty-seven.

Mr. Poe soon resorted to excessive drinking and could not hold a job for more than two years at a time.  Poe moved with his wife and mother-in-law to New York and published his only long fiction, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838).  In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Poe became coeditor of Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine.  While working for Burton’s, Poe published some of his most famous works, including The Fall of the House of Usher.  In 1841 Poe published Murderers in the Rue Morgue.

In 1843 Poe won many awards for his poems and stories, including The Goldbug, which is considered a classic in it’s genre, yet at the same time his wife was suffering from tuberculosis.  This may have actually been part of his inspiration and motivation to write so much during that time.  On January 30, 1847, Virginia Poe died.  After his wife’s death Poe was incredibly depressed, yet he produced a great deal of his most famous work.  In 1845, during the course of his wife’s illness, he published The Raven and Other Poems.

In 1848, Poe began to court his childhood friend Ms. Shelton, and eventually they were to be married.  Poe was traveling to bring his Aunt Clemm to the wedding when he stopped in Baltimore, Maryland.  No one really know exactly what happened but Poe was found unconscious outside a saloon on October 3, 1849.  Many speculate that he drank himself to death, and some others say that he was also a drug addict.  For whatever reason he died in a hospital four days later.