Edgar Allan Poe

Military career

Poe enlisted in the United States Army as a private on May 27, 1827, using the name Edgar A. Perry and claiming to be 22 though he was 18. He served at Fort Independence in Boston Harbor for five dollars a month. That year his first book, Tamerlane and Other Poems, a 40-page collection attributed only to A Bostonian, was published in 50 copies and received virtually no attention. His regiment was posted to Fort Moultrie in Charleston, South Carolina, before embarking on the brig Waltham on November 8, 1827.

Poe was promoted to artificer, an enlisted tradesman preparing shells for artillery, doubling his monthly pay. He served for two years, attaining the rank of sergeant major for artillery, the highest non-commissioned officer rank. Seeking to end his five-year enlistment early, Poe revealed his real name and circumstances to Lieutenant Howard, who promised an honorable discharge if he reconciled with John Allan. Poe wrote to Allan, who was unsympathetic and ignored his pleas for months.

After the death of Allan's wife Frances on February 28, 1829, Allan agreed to support Poe's appointment to West Point. Poe was discharged on April 15, 1829, after securing a replacement. Before entering West Point, he stayed in Baltimore with his aunt Maria Clemm, her daughter Virginia, his brother Henry, and his grandmother. In September 1829, Poe received his first words of encouragement in a review by critic John Neal, prompting him to dedicate a poem in his second book, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems.

Publishing career

After his brother's death, Poe's attempts to earn a living as a writer were mostly unsuccessful, though he became one of the first American authors to do so by his pen alone. His efforts were hampered by the lack of an international copyright law, as American publishers often sold unauthorized copies of British works rather than pay Americans. The Panic of 1837 may have also affected the reception of his work. A boom in American periodicals occurred, but many did not last, and publishers often refused to pay writers or paid late.

Poe turned from poetry to prose, possibly influenced by John Neal's critiques. He placed a few stories with a Philadelphia publication and began his only drama, Politian. In October 1833, the Baltimore Saturday Visiter awarded him a prize for his short story MS. Found in a Bottle, which brought him to the attention of John P. Kennedy, who helped place his stories and introduced him to Thomas W. White, editor of the Southern Literary Messenger.

In 1835, Poe became assistant editor of the Messenger but was discharged within weeks, allegedly for being drunk on the job. He returned to Baltimore and obtained a license to marry his cousin Virginia on September 22, 1835, though it is unknown if they were married then. He was 26 and she was 13. Poe was reinstated after promising to improve, returning to Richmond with Virginia and her mother.

He remained at the Messenger until January 1837, claiming its circulation increased from 700 to 3,500. He published poems, book reviews, critiques, essays, articles, and stories. On May 16, 1836, he and Virginia were officially married in a Presbyterian ceremony, with a witness falsely attesting her age as 21.

Legacy

In his own time, Edgar Allan Poe was best known as a literary critic, and most of what he wrote was nonfiction. Fellow critic James Russell Lowell called him the most sharp-eyed, thoughtful, and daring critic of imaginative writing America had seen, joking that he might as well have used poison instead of ink. His harsh reviews gave him the nickname "tomahawk man." He went after the famous Boston poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, charging him with "the heresy of the didactic" and claiming his work was preachy, unoriginal, and thematically stolen.

Poe predicted Longfellow's fame would fade, saying, "We grant him high qualities, but deny him the Future." Poe later became known for creating a kind of fiction that was hard to label and almost impossible to copy. He was one of the first 19th-century American authors to find a bigger audience in Europe than at home, especially in France, thanks to early translations by Charles Baudelaire. His detective stories featuring C. Auguste Dupin, though few, set the stage for famous sleuths to come.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle said each of those tales was a root from which an entire genre grew. The Mystery Writers of America named their top awards "The Edgars" after him. His work also shaped early science fiction. Jules Verne wrote a sequel to Poe's novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, and H. G. Wells noted that Pym showed what a sharp mind could picture about the South Pole a century ago.

In 2013, The Guardian called Pym one of the greatest English-language novels ever, pointing to its influence on Doyle, Henry James, B. Traven, and David Morrell.

Commemorations and namesake

In fiction, the real Edgar Allan Poe often shows up as a character, usually playing the part of a mad genius or tortured artist, and sometimes his personality gets mixed up with the characters he wrote. These stories also tend to use his detective skills, like in Matthew Pearl's novel The Poe Shadow. Not a single one of Poe's childhood homes is left, not even the Allan family's Moldavia estate. The oldest house still standing in Richmond is the Old Stone House, which now serves as the Edgar Allan Poe Museum, even though Poe never lived there.

Preserved homes, landmarks, and museums

The museum holds things Poe used while staying with the Allan family and some rare first editions of his work. At the University of Virginia, the dorm room at 13 West Range, where Poe is thought to have stayed in 1826, is kept up and open to visitors, looked after by a student and staff group called the Raven Society. The earliest home Poe actually lived in that still exists is at 203 North Amity Street in Baltimore, now the Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum.

He likely moved in there at age 23, living with Maria Clemm and Virginia, and possibly his grandmother and his brother William Henry Leonard Poe. From 1834 to 1844, Poe stayed in at least four different places in Philadelphia: the Indian Queen Hotel on South 4th Street, a spot at 16th and Locust Streets, another at 2502 Fairmount Street, and finally 532 North 7th Street in Spring Garden, which the National Park Service keeps as the Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site.

His last home, in the Bronx in New York City, is preserved as the Edgar Allan Poe Cottage. In Boston, a plaque on Boylston Street sits several blocks from where Poe was actually born. The house at 62 Carver Street is gone, and that street has been renamed Charles Street South. A square once named for him at the intersection of Broadway, Fayette, and Carver Streets vanished when the streets were reorganized.

In 2009, the corner of Charles and Boylston Streets, two blocks north of his birthplace, was named Edgar Allan Poe Square.

Did You Know?

• Poe's grandfather David Poe emigrated from County Cavan, Ireland, around 1750.
• Poe's attending physician said his final words were, 'Lord help my poor soul'.
• Poe's best-known fiction has been labeled Gothic horror and explores themes of death, decomposition, premature burial, and reanimation.