A Guest Introduction to Edgar Allan Poe

Surprise!  This week, our poet gets introduced by Sadie!  That's because she did a history project about him last year, so she knows more interesting facts about him than I do.  Take it away, Sadie!

Edgar Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 19, 1809. In 1810, his father, David Poe, Jr., abandoned his family. About a year after that, Poe’s mother, Elizabeth Poe, died.

Poe was taken in by the Allan family, who lived in Richmond, Virginia. They never actually adopted him, but they served as a foster family. They are the reason his name became Edgar Allan Poe. In 1815, the Allans sailed to the United Kingdom and took Poe with them. Five years later, in 1820, they moved back to Richmond.

In 1836, Poe married his cousin, Virginia Clemm. She was thirteen at the time, and Poe was twenty-seven. Virginia died of tuberculosis in 1847, at the age of twenty-four.

Edgar Allan Poe invented the detective fiction genre, and he is the only American to have invented a book genre.

His short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” was first published in January, 1843. He was paid ten dollars for it, which would be about $300 today.

Poe was tending to his wife, who was dying of tuberculosis, while he was writing his famous poem “The Raven.” Initially, Poe debated whether the bird ought to be a raven or a parrot, before deciding that the colorful tropical bird wasn’t right for the poem.

“The Raven” was first published in 1845. It was rejected by George Rex Graham, the first publisher Poe approached, but Graham felt so bad about Poe’s lack of money that he gave Poe fifteen dollars anyway. The American Review paid him nine dollars for it.

Edgar Allan Poe died on October 7, 1849. He had been missing for a few days before reappearing in Baltimore incoherent and with no idea where he’d been for the past few days. He was wearing someone else’s clothes, and no one is certain what he died of. He was originally buried in the back corner of an obscure graveyard, but his body was later moved to a more prominent place that allowed for more visitors.