97 Facts About Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic who is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales involving mystery and the macabre.

Edgar Allan Poe is widely regarded as one of the central figures of Romanticism and Gothic fiction in the United States and of early American literature.

Edgar Allan Poe is the first well-known American writer to earn a living exclusively through writing, which resulted in a financially difficult life and career.

Edgar Allan Poe was the second child of actors David and Elizabeth "Eliza" Poe.

Edgar Allan Poe's father abandoned the family in 1810, and when Eliza died the following year, Poe was taken in by John and Frances Allan of Richmond, Virginia.

Edgar Allan Poe attended the University of Virginia but left after only a year due to a lack of money.

Edgar Allan Poe frequently quarreled with John Allan over the funds needed to continue his education as well as his gambling debts.

Poe and Allan reached a temporary rapprochement after the death of Allan's wife, Frances, in 1829.

However, Poe later failed as an officer cadet at West Point, declared his intention to become a writer, primarily of poems, and parted ways with Allan.

Edgar Allan Poe switched his focus to prose and spent the next several years working for literary journals and periodicals, becoming known for his own style of literary criticism.

Edgar Allan Poe's work forced him to move between several cities, including Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City.

Edgar Allan Poe planned for years to produce his own journal, The Penn, later renamed The Stylus.

Edgar Allan Poe's works influenced the development of literature throughout the world and even impacted such specialized fields as cosmology and cryptography.

Edgar Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 19,1809, the second child of American actor David Poe Jr.

Edgar Allan Poe had an elder brother, Henry, and a younger sister, Rosalie.

Edgar Allan Poe's father abandoned the family in 1810, and his mother died a year later from pulmonary tuberculosis.

The Allan family had Poe baptized into the Episcopal Church in 1812.

John Edgar Allan Poe alternately spoiled and aggressively disciplined his foster son.

The family sailed to the United Kingdom in 1815, and Poe attended a grammar school for a short period in Irvine, Ayrshire, Scotland, where Allan was born, before rejoining the family in London in 1816.

Edgar Allan Poe was entered at the Reverend John Bransby's Manor House School in Stoke Newington, then a suburb 4 miles north of London.

Edgar Allan Poe may have become engaged to Sarah Elmira Royster before he registered at the University of Virginia in February 1826 to study ancient and modern languages.

Edgar Allan Poe claimed that Allan had not given him sufficient money to register for classes, purchase texts, or procure and furnish a dormitory.

Edgar Allan Poe gave up on the university after a year, but did not feel welcome to return to Richmond, especially when he learned that his sweetheart, Royster, had married another man, Alexander Shelton.

Edgar Allan Poe started using the pseudonym Henri Le Rennet during this period.

Edgar Allan Poe first served at Fort Independence in Boston Harbor for five dollars a month.

Edgar Allan Poe was promoted to "artificer", an enlisted tradesman tasked with preparing shells for artillery.

Edgar Allan Poe served for two years, attaining the rank of sergeant major for artillery, the highest rank that a non-commissioned officer could achieve.

Edgar Allan Poe then sought to end his five-year enlistment early.

Poe revealed his real name and his actual circumstances to his commanding officer, Lieutenant Howard, who promised to allow Poe to be honorably discharged if he reconciled with Allan.

Edgar Allan Poe was finally discharged on April 15,1829, after securing a replacement to finish his enlistment.

Edgar Allan Poe traveled to West Point and matriculated as a cadet on July 1,1830.

In October 1830, Edgar Allan Poe married his second wife Louisa Patterson.

Edgar Allan Poe then decided to leave West Point by intentionally getting court-martialed.

Edgar Allan Poe returned to Baltimore and to his aunt, brother, and cousin in March 1831.

Edgar Allan Poe's efforts were initially hampered by the lack of an international copyright law.

Publishers often refused to pay their writers or paid them much later than they promised, and Edgar Allan Poe repeatedly resorted to humiliating pleas for money and other assistance.

Edgar Allan Poe placed a few stories with a Philadelphia publication and began work on his only drama, Politian.

In 1835, Edgar Allan Poe became assistant editor of the Southern Literary Messenger, but White discharged him within a few weeks, allegedly for being drunk on the job.

Edgar Allan Poe then returned to Baltimore, where he obtained a license to marry his cousin Virginia on September 22,1835, though it is unknown if they were actually married at that time.

Edgar Allan Poe was reinstated by White after promising to improve his behavior, and he returned to Richmond with Virginia and her mother.

Edgar Allan Poe remained at the Messenger until January 1837.

Edgar Allan Poe published several poems, and many book reviews, critiques, essays, and articles, as well as a few stories in the paper.

In 1838, Poe relocated to Philadelphia, where he lived at four different residences between 1838 and 1844, one of which at 532 N 7th Street has been preserved as a National Historic Landmark.

Edgar Allan Poe published numerous articles, stories, and reviews, enhancing the reputation he had established at the Messenger as one of America's foremost literary critics.

Also in 1839, the collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque was published in two volumes, though Edgar Allan Poe received little remuneration from it and the volumes received generally mixed reviews.

In June 1840, Edgar Allan Poe published a prospectus announcing his intentions to start his own journal called The Stylus, although he originally intended to call it The Penn, since it would have been based in Philadelphia.

Edgar Allan Poe left Burton's after a year and found a position as writer and co-editor at Graham's Magazine, which was a successful monthly publication.

Around this time, Edgar Allan Poe attempted to secure a position in the administration of John Tyler, claiming that he was a member of the Whig Party.

Edgar Allan Poe hoped to be appointed to the United States Custom House in Philadelphia with help from President Tyler's son Robert, an acquaintance of Poe's friend Frederick Thomas.

However, Edgar Allan Poe failed to appear for a meeting with Thomas to discuss the appointment in mid-September 1842, claiming to have been sick, though Thomas believed that he had been drunk.

Edgar Allan Poe was promised an appointment, but all positions were eventually filled by others.

One evening in January 1842, Virginia showed the first signs of consumption, or tuberculosis, while singing and playing the piano, which Edgar Allan Poe described as the breaking of a blood vessel in her throat.

Edgar Allan Poe then left Graham's and attempted to find a new position, for a time again angling for a government post.

Edgar Allan Poe finally decided to return to New York where he worked briefly at the Evening Mirror before becoming editor of the Broadway Journal, and later its owner.

The Broadway Journal failed in 1846, and Edgar Allan Poe then moved to a cottage in Fordham, New York, in the Bronx.

That home, now known as the Edgar Allan Poe Cottage, was relocated in later years to a park near the southeast corner of the Grand Concourse and Kingsbridge Road.

Nearby, Edgar Allan Poe befriended the Jesuits at St John's College, now Fordham University.

Edgar Allan Poe attempted to court the poet Sarah Helen Whitman, who lived in Providence, Rhode Island.

Edgar Allan Poe then returned to Richmond and resumed a relationship with his childhood sweetheart Sarah Elmira Royster.

Edgar Allan Poe was taken to Washington Medical College, where he died on Sunday, October 7,1849, at 5:00 in the morning.

Edgar Allan Poe was not coherent long enough to explain how he came to be in his dire condition and why he was wearing clothes that were not his own.

Edgar Allan Poe is said to have repeatedly called out the name "Reynolds" on the night before his death, though it is unclear to whom he was referring.

Edgar Allan Poe's attending physician said that Poe's final words were, "Lord help my poor soul".

One theory dating from 1872 suggests that Edgar Allan Poe's death resulted from cooping, a form of electoral fraud in which citizens were forced to vote for a particular candidate, sometimes leading to violence and even murder.

Edgar Allan Poe died in Baltimore the day before yesterday.

Griswold wrote a biographical article of Edgar Allan Poe called "Memoir of the Author", which he included in an 1850 volume of the collected works.

Many of his claims were either outright lies or obvious distortions; for example, there is little to no evidence that Edgar Allan Poe was a drug addict.

Griswold's book was denounced by those who knew Edgar Allan Poe well, including John Neal, who published an article defending Edgar Allan Poe and attacking Griswold as a "Rhadamanthus, who is not to be bilked of his fee, a thimble-full of newspaper notoriety".

However, Edgar Allan Poe once wrote in a letter to Thomas Holley Chivers that he did not dislike transcendentalists, "only the pretenders and sophists among them".

Beyond the horror stories he is most famous for, Edgar Allan Poe wrote a number of satires, humor tales, and hoaxes.

Edgar Allan Poe was one of the forerunners of American science fiction, responding in his voluminous writing to such emerging literary trends as the explorations into the possibilities of hot air balloons as featured in such works as, "The Balloon-Hoax".

Much of Edgar Allan Poe's work coincided with themes that readers of his day found appealing, though he often professed to abhor the tastes of the majority of the people who read for pleasure in his time.

Edgar Allan Poe disliked didacticism and imitation masquerading as influence, believing originality to be the highest mark of genius.

Edgar Allan Poe believed that any work worthy of being praised should have as its focus a single specific effect.

Edgar Allan Poe describes the method he employed while composing his most famous poem, "The Raven", in an essay entitled "The Philosophy of Composition".

The vast majority of Edgar Allan Poe's writings are nonfictional.

One target of Edgar Allan Poe's criticism was Boston's acclaimed poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who was defended by his friends, literary and otherwise, in what was later called, "The Longfellow War".

Edgar Allan Poe accused Longfellow of "the heresy of the didactic", writing poetry that was preachy, derivative, and thematically plagiarized.

Edgar Allan Poe correctly predicted that Longfellow's reputation and style of poetry would decline, concluding, "We grant him high qualities, but deny him the Future".

Edgar Allan Poe became known as the creator of a type of fiction that was difficult to categorize and nearly impossible to imitate.

Edgar Allan Poe was one of the first American authors of the 19th century to become more popular in Europe than in the United States.

Edgar Allan Poe was particularly esteemed in France, in part due to early translations of his work by Charles Baudelaire.

Edgar Allan Poe's work influenced writings that would eventually come to be called "science fiction", notably the works of Jules Verne, who wrote a sequel to Edgar Allan Poe's novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket called An Antarctic Mystery, known as The Sphinx of the Ice Fields.

Many references to Edgar Allan Poe's works are present in Vladimir Nabokov's novels.

Edgar Allan Poe claimed six were by Poe, though Poe scholar Christopher P Semtner dismisses them as "merely pastiches".

Edgar Allan Poe eschewed the scientific method in Eureka and instead wrote from pure intuition.

In particular, Edgar Allan Poe's suggestions ignored Newtonian principles regarding the density and rotation of planets.

Edgar Allan Poe had placed a notice of his abilities in the Philadelphia paper Alexander's Weekly Messenger, inviting submissions of ciphers which he proceeded to solve.

In July 1841, Edgar Allan Poe had published an essay called "A Few Words on Secret Writing" in Graham's Magazine.

The sensation that Edgar Allan Poe created with his cryptography stunts played a major role in popularizing cryptograms in newspapers and magazines.

Edgar Allan Poe had an influence on cryptography beyond increasing public interest during his lifetime.

The historical Edgar Allan Poe has appeared as a fictionalized character, often in order to represent the "mad genius" or "tormented artist" and in order to exploit his personal struggles.

Edgar Allan Poe is believed to have lived in the home at the age of 23 when he first lived with Maria Clemm and Virginia and possibly his grandmother and possibly his brother William Henry Leonard Edgar Allan Poe.

In March 2014, fundraising was completed for construction of a permanent memorial sculpture, known as Edgar Allan Poe Returning to Boston, at this location.

The winning design by Stefanie Rocknak depicts a life-sized Edgar Allan Poe striding against the wind, accompanied by a flying raven; his suitcase lid has fallen open, leaving a "paper trail" of literary works embedded in the sidewalk behind him.

Sam Porpora was a historian at the Westminster Church in Baltimore, where Edgar Allan Poe is buried; he claimed on August 15,2007, that he had started the tradition in 1949.

Edgar Allan Poe's story has not been confirmed, and some details which he gave to the press are factually inaccurate.