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Edgar Allan Poe is born
Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19,
1809 in Boston Massachusetts. Poe was
the middle child after William Henry Leonard Poe and before Rosalie Poe. He is known for contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was also one of the first American Practitioners of short stories. He had a very weird life and his mysterious and macabre stories reflect that. -
Poe's sister is born
Edgar Poe’s sister, Rosalie Poe, was born on December 10, 1810. The last of the three children, there is no solid documentary evidence for her birth. She was given a home by the Mackenzies, a prominent Richmond family. Rosalie was eventually placed in a charity home in Washington, D.C., where she died in 1874, of what was described as "inflammation of the stomach." Curiously, her tombstone gives her year of birth as 1812--the year after Eliza Poe's death. -
Poe's Parents Die
Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe, also known an Eliza was an American actress and the mother of Edgar Allan Poe. In 1811 while staying at a boarding house she began spitting blood. While she was very ill, friends of Eliza, Mr. and Mrs. Luke Usher took care of the children and her performances were becoming less frequent. On Sunday morning of December 8 of that year she passed away and the children were split up. -
Poe writes his first poem
A fifteen-year-old Edgar Allan Poe pens his first known poem: "Last night, with many cares & toils oppres'd,/ Weary, I laid me on a couch to rest." -
Poe enlists in the U.S. Army and shortly after his first book is published
Unable to support himself, on May 27, 1827, Poe enlisted in the United States Army as a private. Using the name "Edgar A. Perry", he claimed he was 22 years old even though he was 18. He first served at Fort Independence in Boston Harbor for five dollars a month. That same year, he released his first book, a 40-page collection of poetry, -
Poe's older brother dies
Poe's elder brother Henry, who had been in ill health in part due to problems with alcoholism, died on August 1, 1831 -
Poe marries his thirteen year old cousin, Virginia Clemm
In 1836 he returned to Baltimore and secretely married his cousin Virginia Clemm. Poe was 26 and she was 13, though she claimed that she was 21. -
Poe writes his frist novel: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838) is the only complete novel written by American writer Edgar Allan Poe. The work relates the tale of the young Arthur Gordon Pym, who stows away aboard a whaling ship called the Grampus. Various adventures and misadventures befall Pym, including shipwreck, mutiny, and cannibalism, before he is saved by the crew of the Jane Guy. Aboard this vessel, Pym and a sailor named Dirk Peters continue their adventures further south. Docking on land, the -
Poe's story collection, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, is published in two volumes
It was published by the Philadelphia firm Lea & Blanchard and released in two volumes. The publisher was willing to print the anthology based on the recent success of Poe's story "The Fall of the House of Usher." Even so, Lea & Blanchard would not pay Poe any royalties; his only payment was 20 free copies.[ -
Poe publishes the poem, The Raven
"The Raven" is a narrative poem by American writer Edgar Allan Poe. First published in January 1845, the poem is often noted for its musicality, stylized language, and supernatural atmosphere. It tells of a talking raven's mysterious visit to a distraught lover, tracing the man's slow fall into madness. The lover, often identified as being a student, is lamenting the loss of his love, Lenore. Sitting on a bust of Pallas, the raven seems to further instigate his distress with its constant r -
Poe's Wife Virginia dies to tuberculosis at their home in the Bronx
The Broadway Journal failed in 1846. Poe moved to a cottage in the Fordham section of The Bronx, New York. That home, known today as the "Poe Cottage", is on the southeast corner of the Grand Concourse and Kingsbridge Road, where he befriended the Jesuits at St. John's College nearby (now Fordham University). Virginia died there on January 30, 1847. Biographers and critics often suggest that Poe's frequent theme of the "death of a beautiful woman" stems from the repeated loss of wome -
Edgar Allan Poe Dies
On October 3, 1849, Poe was found on the streets of Baltimore delirious, "in great distress, and... in need of immediate assistance", according to the man who found him, Joseph W. Walker. He was taken to the Washington Medical College, where he died on Sunday, October 7, 1849, at 5:00 in the morning. Poe was never coherent long enough to explain how he came to be in his dire condition, and, oddly, was wearing clothes that were not his own.
