Here is my senior paper from Highschool:
When Edgar Allan Poe died under miserable and tragic circumstances in Baltimore in 1849, the disorder of the later years of his life was reflected in the astonishing disarray and scatter of his writings. By nature a precise and delicate writer, one of the ablest editors of his time, the “unmerciful disaster which followed fast and followed faster,” that species of “hard luck” which is the subtle result of a nervous ineptitude to cope with practical affairs, continued to dog both the memory of his personality and the editing of his works.
Edgar Allan Poe’s name is synonymous with horror. His contribution to American literature far exceeds the dark and macabre. Poe also wrote romantic poetry, black comedy, science fiction, broad farce, and is considered by many to be the father of the detective story. Each of the cities in which Poe lived honor him as their own (Goudsward 1). Best known for his poems and short fiction, Edgar Allen Poe deserves more credit than any other writer for the transformation of the short story from anecdote to art (Island 1). It is said that Poe’s source of happiness was in his poetry (Gnoser 1).
Edgar Allen Poe was born on January 19, 1809. His mother, Elizabeth Arnold Poe, was an actress who had attained prominence as a leading lady. His father, David Poe Jr., had pursued a somewhat less successful career on the stage marked by periods of binges of alcoholism (Poe Bio 1). Mr. Placide’s Theatre Company employed both actors in Boston (Poe and Richmond 1). They had been married while on tour in Richmond, Virginia in 1806. Poe’s father is said to have abandoned his family around the time of Edgar’s second birthday. Elizabeth Poe took her children Edgar, William, and Rosalie with her to Richmond again sometime in 1811. She died there that December on the 8th. Edgar was then separated from his siblings and placed in the care of a childless couple, John and Frances Allen (Wilson 1)
The Richmond Theatre where Edgar Poe’s mother had performed burned to the ground on December 26, 1811, only eighteen days after her death. The fire took the lives of many Richmond citizens including the Governor of Virginia, George Smith and his wife. At the site of the tragedy on Easy Broad Street, Monumental Episcopal Church was erected as a memorial to the fire’s victims. The Allans maintained pew number 80 in the church where young Edgar worshipped (Wilson 1).
John Allan was an English/Scottish partner in the merchant firm Ellis & Allan, an exporter of Tobacco (Poe and Richmond 1). John Allan kept a tight hold on the family’s purse strings but who also recognized the value of education. In 1815, he took his wife and Edgar, who was never legally adopted by the Allans, to move to England on an extended business trip. In England, Edgar spent his early childhood at prestigious boarding academies, including the Manor House School of Doctor Bransby at Stoke Newington. Evidently, Edgar was an excellent student: in 1819, John Allan wrote to his friend William Galt that, “Edgar is in the country at school, he is a very fine boy & a good scholar.” It was while he was in England that young Edgar became acquainted with Gothic literature that was popular in European countries (Poe Bio 1).
Allan returned to Richmond in 1820 and Edgar continued his education in private schools, studying Latin, verse, and oratory. He was also an athletic youth, a superior swimmer and marksman. But he was not popular. He peers taunted him as the son of actors, a disreputable profession, who occupied an odd status in the Allan household as an unadopted, stepson (Poe Bio 1). Poe’s boyhood in Richmond can be recalled in one of his finest poems, “To Helen,” which was inspired by Jane Stith Stanard, the mother of a schoolmate, Robert Stanard (Poe and Richmond 1). Poe was shown praise and encouragement from this woman for his first literary works, and he repaid her in full with his stirring lines: “To the glory that was Greece And the grandeur that was Rome,” (Poe and Richmond 1). Sadly, she died of a brain tumor when he was fifteen years old. More so than Elizabeth Poe or Mrs. Allan, he looked upon this woman as his idealized mother. Her untimely death was the apparent cause of his first extended period of psychological depression, during which he often visited her grave (E.A. Poe society 1). Also during this time, John Allan’s trading firm suffered a series of financial setbacks resulting in the dissolving of the company. Poe’s stepfather took to extramarital affairs and to the bottle (Poe Bio 1).
In 1825 John Allan inherited a large sum of money, and this abrupt reversal of fortune enabled him to enroll Edgar at the University of Virginia on February 14, 1826, during the second semester (Poe Bio 1, Wilson 1). He only stayed for a year (Island 1). While there, however, he became an active member of the Jefferson Literary Society, and passed his courses with good grades at the end of the session in December (Wilson 1). His class work concentrated mainly on classical and modern languages (Poe Bio 1).
Shortly before his departure, Poe began to court a fifteen-year-old woman named Sarah Elmira Royster. It is unclear if the two were engaged before he left for college. However, his intention to marry her is fairly certain (Poe Bio 1). After school, when he tried to renew his courtship of Sarah Royster, her parents told him that she was abroad. He eventually learned that his first fiancée had become engaged to another man, a Mr. Shelton (Poe Bio 1). It is also believe that John Allan broke up the engagement (Island 1).
Before Poe left college, he and his stepfather, John Allan, clashed on money issues. Poe maintained that he could not live a gentleman’s lifestyle on the meager allowance that John Allan furnished him (Poe Bio 1). Poe took to gambling to pay for his lifestyle and compiled debts of honor amounting to some two thousand dollars. Today, this amount would be valued at roughly thirty thousand dollars. John Allan refused to pay Poe’s debts and prevented his return to the University, ending his enrollment (Island 1).
Poe returned to Richmond where he worked for a time in Allan’s counting house for a time. After a quarrel with John Allan, Poe left Richmond and moved to Baltimore in March 1827. After living in Baltimore for a short time, he moved back to the city of his birth, Boston, where he took the first of several pseudonyms, calling himself Henri Le Rennet (Poe Bio 1). It was in Boston that Poe wrote the first book of poems that would eventually be published, at his own expense, under his real name (Island 1). Tamerlane and Other Poems, as it was named, reflected his rift with his Richmond family and, in part at least, must have been composed while he was still in Virginia (Poe and Richmond 1). It is now such a rare book that a single copy has sold for $200,00.00 (Wilson 1). Without a regular source of income, however, Poe joined the army at the age of eighteen. He enlisted under the fictitious name of Edgar A. Perry. He was initially assigned to duty with coastal artillery at Fort Independence in Boston Harbor and later transferred to Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island outside of the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina (Poe Bio 2). During his two years of service, Poe was promoted to the rank of Sergeant major. Poe secured, with aid of John Allan, a discharge from the army and went to Baltimore (Wilson 1). In Baltimore, he lived at a boarding house named “Mrs. Yarrington’s,” with his aunt, Mrs. Maria Clemm, her daughter, Virginia, and his paternal grandmother, Elizabeth Poe (Poe and Richmond 2). In 1829, Poe’s second book of poems, Al Araaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems, was published (Wilson 1). By the publication of his second book, however, tragedy struck Poe’s life once more. In February 1829, Poe’s stepmother, Frances Allen, died. This was the third mother figure in his life to suffer an untimely death (Poe Bio 2).
The death of Frances Allan set the stage for reconciliation between Poe and John Allan. According to some accounts, it was through Allan’s influence that Poe received an appointment to the United States Military academy at West Point in July 1830. After six months, Poe learned of his stepfather’s marriage to a woman with children and realized that he would never receive any inheritance from his stepfather. Poe resumed his losing way at cards, drank heavily, and neglected his duties, refusing to leave his room at the Academy for days on end. He was dismissed from West Point in March 1831, for disobedience of orders (Poe Bio 2).
Shortly after his dismissal, he brought out a third slim volume of poems, Poems by Edgar A. Poe…Second Edition, funded at least partially by his fellow cadets. This volume contained the famous To Helen, and Israfel. These poems show the restraint and calculated musical effects of language that were to characterize his poetry (Christaldi 1). Like its predecessors, this third book was comprised mostly on conventional romantic subjects, notably the myth of an idealized world of beauty and joy recaptured as dreams and memories. Unfortunately, like his first two collections, it failed to receive any reviews (Poe Bio 2).
In 1831, Poe entered into a new stage in his fledgling literary career. While living with his aunt, the tastes of the American reading public had turned from romantic poetry and toward humorous and satirical prose (Poe Bio 2). Young Poe began writing prose tales, five of which appeared in the Philadelphia Saturday Courier in 1832 (Wilson 1). All five were comic pieces, “Metzengerstein,” “The Duc de L’Omelette,” “The Bargain Lost,” “A Tale of Jerusalem,” and “A Decided Loss.” Throughout the remainder of his career Poe would write comic and satiric tales, including parodies, burlesques and grotesques, or outright hoaxes. It was in 1833 that Poe wrote “MS Found in a Bottle,” the first of his sea tales. Shortly later, it was followed in 1834 by “The Assignation,” the first Poe story to appear in a magazine with national circulation. He also proposed to publish a volume of short stories under the title of Eleven Tales of the Arabesque. He devised a framework of assigning each tale to a fictional member of a literary club, which he called the Folio Club. All eleven tales were eventually published, but not as the Folio Club. It was not until the Baltimore Saturday Visitor awarded the story a $50 first prize in a literary contest, that Poe’s Folio Club actually received any attention. They brought his talents to the attention of John Pendleton Kennedy (Poe Bio 2). Through Kennedy, Poe received entree to the Southern Literary Messenger, for Thomas W. White.
When John Allan took ill in 1834, Poe traveled back to Richmond in hopes of some positive end to his conflict with his stepfather. The dying man would have none of it. Allan refused to see Poe and even threatened to cane him if Poe dared enter his sick room. Edgar’s grandmother, Elizabeth Poe, died a year later (Poe Bio 2). Poe, his aunt, and Virginia moved to Richmond that same year, just as Poe began his career. It was while at the Messenger that Poe published his first true horror story, Berenice (Christaldi 1). Shortly thereafter, as of the December issue of 1835, Poe began editing for the Messenger (Wilson 1). The following year, on the May 16th, Poe and his young cousin of 13 were married.
While editing the Southern Literary Messenger, Poe wrote his only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, as well as the play, Politian (Poe and Richmond 2). While there he also contributed additional tales, poetry, and scores of book reviews (Poe Bio 2). However, most of his contributions were serious, analytical, and critical reviews that earned him respect as a critic. He praised young Dickens and a few other contemporaries but most of his attention was devoted to devastating reviews of popular contemporary authors. His contributions undoubtedly increased the magazine’s circulation, but they offended its owner who took offense to Poe’s drinking (Island 1-2). In the January 1837 issue of the Messenger, Poe announced his withdrawal as editor but also included the first installment of his novel, five of his reviews and two of his poems. This was to be the paradoxical pattern for Poe’s career: success as an artist and editor but failure to satisfy his employers and to secure a livelihood (Christaldi 1).
Poe, his bride and his mother-in-law then moved to New York, where they would remain for about eighteen months before relocating to Philadelphia for the next eight years (Poe Bio 3). It is here that Poe wrote Morella in 1835, Ligeia in 1838, one of his most famous tales, The Fall of the House of Usher in 1839, and William Wilson in 1840. Poe also became co-editor of Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine where he was responsible for most of the literary reviews and at least one feature per month. Poe financed the publication of twenty-five short stories as Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in 1840. Surprisingly, the sales were surprisingly poor and other reviewers neglected its appearance, many of which Poe had already alienated through his criticism of their talents and tastes. In response, Poe fired back with sharply barbed parodies like How to Write a Blackwood’s Article, and through political satires, many of which were aimed at the high life-style and sensibilities of the middle class. After an unkind review of the popular American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in which Poe accused him of Plagiarism, Poe quarreled and was fired by his co-editor, Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine owner.
Following his removal as co-editor, Poe tried to start his own literary journal, Penn Magazine, but found no financial backers. Afterward, he worked for a year as an editor at Graham’s Magazine, then attempted to gain a position at a custom’s house, much like his colleague Nathaniel Hawthorne, but again found only failure. To earn a living Poe turned to writing comic pieces, but in 1842 his wife, Virginia, suffered a burst blood vessel followed by a period of contracted tuberculosis. The influence of this on Poe’s mind may be reflected in his famous 1842 allegory of epidemic disease, The Masque of the Red Death, which was published at a time with Philadelphia was suffering from an outbreak of cholera (Poe Bio 3).
In 1843, Poe began a series of murder stories told from the narrative perspective of fictional murderers. These would eventually include “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Black Cat,” “The Imp of Perverse,” and “The Cask of the Amontillado.” Also in that same year, Poe enjoyed his most important boost to his career with the creation and publication of “The Gold Bug,” in which the protagonist, William Legrand, shared traits to Poe’s most famous detective, C. Auguste Dupin. Poe’s success allowed him to continue to publish three stories in which Dupin solves crimes that baffle the French police (Poe Bio 3).
In 1845, after Poe moved back to New York City, he began to write poetry again. It was here that he wrote perhaps his best-known piece of all, The Raven. At the poem’s publication, Poe received almost instant success as the poem became a popular sensation, and it gave him a new source of income as he became in demand to recite his own verses and lectures to paying audiences. During the years following, Poe wrote nearly all his famous poems, including Ulalume, and Annabel Lee. Another large boost to his career came when James Russell Lowell wrote a complimentary essay about Poe in Graham’s Magazine (Poe Bio 3). With his assistance, Poe became the editor of the Broadway Journal (Wilson 1). He contributed over 60 reviews and essays, a few short stories, and revised versions of his other work to the journal.
Poe now had to watch as his wife Virginia’s health deteriorated, just as it seemed his career was uprising. In his own words, he suffered “the horrible, never-ending oscillation between hope and despair.” On January 30, 1847, Virginia Poe died. Poe almost immediately lapsed into depression and hard drinking (Poe Bio 3). Poe was unable to take even a little alcohol without a massive change of personality, and any excess was accompanied by physical prostration. Throughout his life those illnesses had interfered with his success as an editor, and had given him a reputation for intemperateness that he scarcely deserved (Wilson 2).
Surprisingly, Poe pulled out his descent, turning to composition of theoretical works about literature, human nature, and the cosmos at large, even publishing a complete theory about God’s will and the universe in Eureka: A prose Poem in 1848, and continued to lecture. During this time, Poe developed friendships with several women, including Sarah Helen Whitman, Mrs. Annie Richmond, and Mrs. Sarah Elmira Shelton. Mrs. Shelton was formerly known as Sarah Elmira Royster, Poe’s adolescent fiancée. He became conditionally engaged to the older Sarah Whitman, but the engagement was abruptly ended when he called upon her in a drunken state (Poe Bio 3).
Contrary to popular belief, Poe’s life was relatively stable in his final year of 1849. He continued to earn a living through his lectures and recital performances. He visited friends that he had made in the cities he lived. In fact, Poe spent two months in Richmond and became reacquainted with the widowed Sarah Elmira Shelton. Apparently she also accepted a proposal of marriage from Poe (Poe Bio 3).
Edgar Allen Poe left Richmond for New York, stopping in Baltimore on September 28, 1849. His purposes were unknown and his activities over the following days are apparently not on record. Five days later he was found in an incoherent drunken stupor outside a well-known tavern. He was sent to the best hospital in Baltimore of the time, on Broadway, where he fell into a coma. During his third night at the hospital, Poe went into a violent rage, and could not be held down. Reportedly, he screamed the name “Reynolds” throughout the night. On the morning of October 7, Edgar Allan Poe put his head to one side, whispered “Lord help my poor soul,” and then died. To this day no one knows the actual reason for Poe’s death. On Edgar Allen Poe’s gravestone is inscribed the epitaph, “Hic Tandem Felicis Conduntur Reliquae. Edgar Allen Poe, Obiit Oct. VII 1849.” Translated, it reads “Here at last he is happy. Edgar Allen Poe, died Oct 7, 1849.” On the stone’s reverse side reads “Jam Parce sepulto,” translated as “Spare these remains.” Strangely, no one knows exactly where Poe’s body lies due to his body being moved over the course of history (Hickey 1-2). Poe is caught up in a true tale that is worthy of his own pen, lying eternally shrouded in mystery in the city where he only meant to spend a few days.
Poe gave his last reading of The Raven on September 25, 1849. Thirteen days later, Poe was dead (Poe and Richmond 2).
“…And his eyes have all the seeming of a Demon that is dreaming,
And the lamplight o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out the shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore!” (The Raven 5).