Education and Inspiration through the ancient art of storytelling!
January 19, 1809 – Edgar Poe is born in Boston to two out of work actors.
December 8, 1811 – Poe’s mother dies in Richmond. A friend and fan of his mother’s work, Francis Allan takes in young Edgar, though he is never formally adopted.
1815 – Business takes the Allan family to England where Poe attends school for five years.
1821 – Resumes education in a private school in Richmond, Virginia and shows proficiently in Latin, Poetry and Athletics.
1826 – Attends newly founded University of Virginia, a pet project of Thomas Jefferson, who often dines with students. Poe show aptitude in modern and classic languages, but is forced to drop-out when John Allan refuses to pay his bills.
1827 – Poe enlists in the military as Edgar Perry and publishes his first collection of poetry with financial assistance from his friends; “Tamerlane and Other Poems” receives mixed reviews.
1829 – Poe attains the rank of Sergeant Major, but then pays for another man to serve out his term when Francis Allan dies. He returns to Richmond to make amends with John Allan who sponsors his application to West Point.
1831 – Poe deliberately gets expelled from West Point when John Allan refuses to support him. For the next several years he works as an assistant editor in several literary journals moving from Baltimore, to Richmond, to New York, and Philadelphia. Every journal he edits doubles its subscription base and revenue, but Poe never sees financial success as the publisher rakes in the profits.
1833 – He is disappointed to win second place in a poetry contest, even though his short story, “Message Found in a Bottle” wins first place, a cash prize and some acclaim!
1836 – Poe, age 27, marries his first cousin Virginia Clemm, who is 13. Her mother, Poe’s Aunt Maria becomes his caretaker for the rest of his life. She runs a boarding house with financial support from another relative.
1839 – With his growing reputation for the macabre, Poe publishes his first collection of short stories, “Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque.” He also publishes his only scientific textbook, “The Conchologist’s First Book”, his only financial success.
1840’s – Throughout the decade Poe publishes a series of critically acclaimed short stories:
1842 – Virginia bursts a blood vessel while playing the piano and spends the next five years in a roller-coaster of recovery and relapse before dying of tuberculoses in 1847. Of this time Poe writes, “Each time I felt all the agonies of death - and at each accession of the disorder I loved her more dearly and clung to her life with more desperate pertinacity. I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”
1845 – “The Raven” cements Poe’s international reputation, though he receives virtually no income from the poem. (Poe met with Charles Dickens in 1842 to reform international copyright laws; both authors had trouble with trans-Atlantic piracy!)
October 7, 1849 – Poe dies. The end is unclear. He travels from Richmond to Philadelphia, but ends up on the streets of Baltimore. He was found in another man’s clothes, semi-conscious and died at the hospital four days later.
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