Jan 5, 2010
Edgar Allan Poe was born into a theatrical family on January 19, 1809. His father, David Poe, was a lawyer-turned-actor, and his mother, Elizabeth Arnold, was an English actress. Both his parents died before Poe turned three years old, and he was raised by John Allan, a rich businessman, in Richmond, Virginia. Allan never legally adopted Poe, and their relationship became a stormy one after Poe reached his teenage years.
Unlike the narrator in ‘‘The Tell-Tale Heart,’’ who claims that he had no desires for the old man’s gold, Poe was dependent on Allan for financial support. While Allan funded Poe’s education at a private school in England for five years, he failed to support him when he attended the University of Virginia and the United States Military Academy at West Point. Aware that he would never inherit much from his prosperous foster father, Poe embarked on a literary career at the age of twenty-one.
In 1835, Poe secretly married his thirteen-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm. For the next two years, he worked as an assistant editor for the Southern Literary Messenger while publishing fiction and book reviews. He was ill-suited for editorial work. Like his natural father, Poe was an alcoholic. Dismissed by his employer, Poe moved to New York City and later to Philadelphia. He published several works, including ‘‘The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym’’ in 1838, ‘‘The Fall ofthe House of Usher’’ in 1839, and ‘‘The Tell-Tale Heart’’ in 1843. While his writings were well regarded, his financial position was constantly precarious. Poe took on a series of editorial positions, but his alcoholism and contentious temper continued to plague him. In 1845 Poe published ‘‘The Raven,’’ his most famous poem. Celebrated as a gifted poet, he failed to win many friends due to his unpleasant temperament. After his wife’s death from tuberculosis in 1847, Poe became involved in a number of romances, including one with Elmira Royster that had been interrupted in his youth. Now Elmira was the widowed Mrs. Shelton. It was during the time they were preparing for their marriage that Poe, for reasons unknown, arrived in Baltimore in late September of 1849. On October 3, he was discovered in a state of semiconsciousness. He died on October 7 without being able to explain what had happened during the last days of his life.
Upon Poe’s death in 1849, his one-time friend and literary executor, R. W. Griswold, wrote a libelous obituary in the New York Tribune defaming Poe by attributing the psychological conditions of many of his literary characters to Poe’s own state of mind. Most critics, however, contend that there is nothing to suggest that Poe psychologically resembled any of his emotionally and mentally unstable fictitious characters. Indeed, he took pride in demonstrating his keen intellect in his ‘‘tales of ratiocination.’’
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