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Edgar Allen Poe is born.
Edgar Poe was born in Boston Massachusetts to Elizabeth Arnold Poe and David Poe, both traveling actors. The couple already had one son named Henry. Edgar Allen Poe was orphaned at a young age when his mother died shortly after his father abandoned the family. Poe was taken in by John and Frances Allan, of Richmond, Virginia, but they never formally adopted him. -
Poe's Sister is Born
Poe's sister Rosalie is born. Shortly after her birth, or possibly even before it, David Poe deserts the family, leaving Poe's mother alone with three children. Making matters worse, Elizabeth Poe soon falls ill with tuberculosis. -
Poe's Parents Die
Elizabeth Arnold Poe dies of tuberculosis in Richmond, Virginia. Within days, David Poe also dies of tuberculosis too. With no parents to take care of Poe and his siblings, the three children of the family are split up. Henry goes to live with his paternal grandparents. A Richmond couple, John and Frances Allan, take in Edgar as a foster child. Rosalie is taken in by another Richmond family named Mackenzie. Both Edgar and Rosalie adopt their foster families' names as their middle names. -
Poe writes his first poem.
Edgar Allen Poe wrote a two line poem. Last night, with many cares & toils oppres‘d, Weary, I laid me on a couch to rest —.” This is Poe’s earliest surviving poem. It was never published during his lifetime, or used as part of a longer poem. -
Poe enlists in the U.S. Army and shortly after his first book is published.
Poe enlists in the U.S. Army under the name "Edgar A. Perry." Shortly after, his first book—a poetry collection entitled Tamerlane and Other Poems is published. The author is listed only as "A Bostonian." -
Poe's older brother dies.
William Henry Leonard Poe, Edgar’s older brother, dies in Baltimore, probably of tuberculosis or cholera. (Discounting the possiblity of cholera, it has been noted that the disease did not arrive in the United States until 1832.) -
Poe marries his thirteen year old cousin, Virgina Clemm.
Edgar (aged 27) and Virginia (aged 13) marry in Richmond, Virginia. The ceremony is officiated by the Reverend Amasa Convers, a Presbyterian minister who was also editor of the Southern Religious Telegraph. -
Poe writes his first novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.
Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym is published in New York by Harper & Brothers. -
Poe's story collection Tales of the Grostesque and Arabesque is published in two volumes.
After 1835, having failed to find a publisher, Poe abandoned his proposed Tales of the Folio Club, but not the idea of a collected edition of his prose fiction. Dropping the apparatus of a literary club, and the “burlesques upon criticism,” he combined the original tales with additional items which had appeared in the pages of the Southern Literary Messenger. This new collection of 25 stories became Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque. -
Poe publishes the poem, The Raven
Poe publishes the poem , The Raven in the New York Evening Mirror. It is very successful, bringing the writer the fame and fortune that have long eluded him. He soon becomes editor and owner of a magazine called the Broadway Journal, a doomed enterprise that is already in debt when Poe takes over. -
Poe's wife Virginia dies.
Poe's wife Virginia dies of tuberculosis at their home in the Bronx. Poe has been so despondent during the final months of her illness that friends thought he was going insane. The loss of his wife sends Poe into a downward spiral of alcoholism -
Edgar Allen Poe Dies
After being found unconscious in a Baltimore gutter, Edgar Allan Poe is taken to the hospital and pronounced dead of causes still unknown. He is buried at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Baltimore.