Edgar Allan Poe

Unquestionably one of America's major writers, Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was far ahead of his time in his vision of a special area of human experience—the "inner world" of dream, hallucination, and imagination. He wrote fiction, poetry, and criticism and was a magazine editor.

Edgar Allan Poe was best known to his own generation as an editor and critic; his poems and short stories commanded only a small audience. But to some extent in his poems, and to an impressive degree in his tales, he pioneered in opening up areas of human experience for artistic treatment at which his contemporaries only hinted. His vision asserts that reality for the human being is essentially subterranean, contradictory to surface reality, and profoundly irrational in character. Two generations later he was hailed by the symbolist movement as the prophet of the modern sensibility.

Poe was born in Boston on Jan. 19, 1809, the son of professional actors. By the time he was 3, Edgar, his older brother, and younger sister had lost their mother to consumption and their father through desertion. The children were split up, going to various families to live. Edgar went to the charitable Richmond, Virginia, home of John and Frances Allan, whose name Poe was to take later as his own middle name.

A New Family

The Allans were wealthy then and were to become more so later, and though they never adopted Poe, for many years it appeared that he was to be their heir. They treated him like an adopted son, saw to his education in private academies, and took him to England for a 5-year stay; and at least Mrs. Allan bestowed considerable affection upon him.

As Edgar entered adolescence, however, bad feelings developed between him and John Allan. Allan disapproved of his ward's literary inclinations, thought him surly and ungrateful, and gradually seems to have decided that Poe was not to be his heir after all. When, in 1826, Poe entered the newly opened University of Virginia, Allan's allowance was so meager that Poe turned to gambling to supplement his income. In 8 months he lost $2, 000. Allan's refusal to help him led to total estrangement, and in March 1827 Poe stormed out on his own.

Poe managed to get to Boston, where he signed up for a 5-year enlistment in the U.S. Army. In 1827, as well, he had his Tamerlane and Other Poems published at his own expense, but the book failed to attract notice. By January 1829, serving under the name of Edgar A. Perry, Poe rose to the highest noncommissioned rank in the Army, sergeant major. He was reluctant to serve out the full enlistment, however, and he arranged to be discharged from the Army on the understanding that he would seek an appointment at West Point. He thought that such a move might cause a reconciliation with his guardian. That same year Al Araaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems was published in Baltimore and received a highly favorable notice from the novelist and critic John Neal. Armed with these new credentials, Poe visited Allan in Richmond, but another violent quarrel forced him to leave in May 1830.

The West Point appointment came through the next month, but, since Poe no longer had any use for it, he did not last long as a cadet. Lacking Allan's permission to resign, Poe sought and received a dismissal for "gross neglect of duty" and "disobedience of orders." His guardian, long widowed, had taken a young wife who might well give him an heir, and Poe realized that his hopes of a legacy were without foundation.

Marriage and the Search for a Place

During his early years of exile Poe had lived in Baltimore for a while with his aunt Maria Clemm and her 7-year-old daughter, Virginia. He returned to his aunt's home in 1831, publishing Poems by Edgar Allan Poe and beginning to place short stories in magazines. In 1833 he received a prize for "MS. Found in a Bottle, " and John Pendleton Kennedy got him a job on the Southern Literary Messenger. In 1836 Poe married his cousin Virginia—now 13 years old—and moved to Richmond with his bride and mother-in-law. Excessive drinking lost him his job in 1837, but he had produced prolifically for the journal. He had contributed his Politian, as well as 83 reviews, 6 poems, 4 essays, and 3 short stories. He had also quintupled the magazine's circulation. Rejection in the face of such accomplishment was extremely distressing to him, and his state of mind from then on, as one biographer put it, "was never very far from panic."

The panic accelerated after 1837. Poe moved with Virginia and her mother to New York, where he did hack work and managed to publish The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838). Then they moved to Philadelphia, where Poe served as coeditor of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine. In 2 years he boosted its circulation from 5, 000 to 20, 000 and contributed some of his best fiction to its pages, including "The Fall of the House of Usher." In 1840, furthermore, he published Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque. But there was trouble at Burton's, and in 1841 Poe left for the literary editorship of Graham's Magazine.

It was becoming clear that 2 years was about as long as Poe could hold a job, and his stay at Graham's confirmed this principle. Though he contributed skillfully wrought fiction and unquestionably developed as a critic, his endless literary feuding, his alcoholism, and his inability to get along very well with people caused him to leave after 1842.

Illness and Crisis

The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Man That Was Used Up emerged in 1843, and a Philadelphia newspaper offered a $100 prize for his "The Gold Bug, " but Poe was now facing a kind of psychological adversity against which he was virtually helpless. His wife, who had been an absolutely crucial source of comfort and support to him, began showing signs of the consumption that would eventually kill her. When his burden became too great, he tried to relieve it with alcohol, which made him ill.

After great struggle Poe got a job on the New York Mirror in 1844. He lasted, characteristically, into 1845, switching then to the editorship of the Broadway Journal. Although he was now deep in public literary feuds, things seemed to be breaking in his favor. The 1844 publication of the poem "The Raven" finally brought him some fame, and in 1845 the publication of two volumes, The Raven and Other Poems and Tales, both containing some of his best work, did in fact move him into fashionable literary society. But his wife's health continued to deteriorate, and he was not earning enough money to support her and Clemm.

Poe's next job was with Godey's Lady's Book, but he was unable to sustain steady employment, and amid the din of plagiarism charges and libel suits, his fortunes sank to the point that he and his family almost starved in their Fordham cottage in the winter of 1846. Then, on Jan. 30, 1847, Virginia Poe died.

The wonder is not that Poe began totally to disintegrate but that he nevertheless continued to produce work of very high caliber. In 1848 he published the brilliantly ambitious Eureka, and he was even to make a final, heart-wrenching attempt at rehabilitation. He returned to Richmond in 1849, there to court a now-widowed friend of his youth, Mrs. Shelton. They were to be married, and Poe left for New York at the end of September to bring Clemm back for the wedding. On the way he stopped off in Baltimore. Nobody knows exactly what happened, and there is no real proof that he was picked up by a gang who used him to "repeat" votes, but he was found on October 3 in a stupor near a saloon that had been used as a polling place. He died in a hospital 4 days later.

World of His Work

It is not hard to see the connection between the nightmare of Poe's life and his work. Behind a screen of sometimes substantial, sometimes flimsy "reality, " his fictional work resembles the dreams of a distressed individual who keeps coming back, night after night, to the same pattern of dream. At times he traces out the pattern lightly, at other times in a "thoughtful" mood, but often the tone is terror. He finds himself descending, into a cellar, a wine vault, a whirlpool, always falling. The women he meets either change form into someone else or are whisked away completely. And at last he drops off, into a pit or a river or a walled-up tomb.

Poe's critics interpret this pattern to represent the search of the individual for himself by going deep into himself and his ultimate arrival at the unplumbed mystery of his inner self. This search has come, of course, to characterize much of 20th-century art, and it is the distinguished accomplishment of Poe as an artist that his work looks forward with such startling precision to the work of the century that followed.

Further Reading

Arthur H. Quinn, Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography (1941), is extremely reliable. Two very readable treatments are Hervey Allen, Israfel: The Life and Times of Edgar Allan Poe (1934), and William R. Bittner, Poe: A Biography (1962). A thorough study is Edward C. Wagenknecht, Edgar Allan Poe: The Man behind the Legend (1963). Two critical studies which supplement each other are Patrick F. Quinn, The French Face of Edgar Allan Poe (1957), which concentrates on the fiction, and Edward H. Davidson, Poe: A Critical Study (1957), which emphasizes the poetry. See also Killis Campbell, The Mind of Poe (1933); Haldeen Braddy, Glorious Incense: The Fulfillment of Edgar Allan Poe (1953); and Harry Levin, The Power of Blackness (1958). Perry Miller, The Raven and the Whale: The War of Words and Wits in the Era of Poe and Melville (1956), and Sidney P. Moss, Poe's Literary Battles: The Critic in the Context of His Literary Milieu (1963), discuss Poe in the context of his times. For a full list of Poe's works see Robert E. Spiller and others, eds., Literary History of the United States, vol. 3 (1948; 3d rev. ed. 1963). □

Poe, Edgar Allan (1809–49), son of itinerant actors, was born in Boston. His father died the following year, and may have deserted his wife before that time, for she continued to support herself, taking the child with her from place to place until her death at Richmond, Va. (1811), when she left penniless Edgar and two other children: William Henry Leonard Poe (1808–31), who became a poet and may have collaborated with his brother; and Rosalie Poe (1810–74). Edgar was taken into the home of a Richmond merchant, John Allan. Although never legally adopted, for a long while he used his foster father's name, employing it as a middle name after 1824. He went to England (1815–20) with the Allans, and there attended school, as described in the semi‐autobiographical story “William Wilson.” After their return to Richmond, Mr. Allan, who had inherited a great fortune, was neither faithful to his wife nor sympathetic with his stepson, whose favoring of Mrs. Allan caused him to counter with remarks besmirching the character of Edgar and hinting at the possible illegitimacy of Rosalie. The relationship was further strained during Poe's attendance at the University of Virginia (1826), when Allan would give him no money, and he resorted unsuccessfully to gambling.

Allan insisted on Poe's preparation for a legal career, and after a violent quarrel the youth went to Boston, where he published Tamerlane (1827), issued anonymously at his own expense, which found no public. Under an assumed name and an incorrect age, he entered the U.S. army (1827) and was sent to Sullivan's Island, South Carolina, the setting for his later stories “The Gold‐Bug” and “The Balloon Hoax.” Mrs. Allan's deathbed plea caused a cool reconciliation with Allan, who aided Poe in obtaining an appointment to West Point and sent him a small sum to live on meanwhile in Baltimore, where he stayed with his brother and his aunt, Mrs. Maria Clemm, while arranging for the publication of Al Aaraaf (1829), which contained the sonnet “To Science” and “ Tamerlane.” Admitted to West Point (1830), he soon set about by gross neglect of duty to get himself dismissed (1831), since his reason for attendance, the desire to reinstate himself with Allan, had already been lost.

During a short stay in New York, he published Poems by Edgar A. Poe (1831), containing early versions of “Israfel,” “To Helen,” and The City in the Sea, and then went to live with Mrs. Clemm in Baltimore (1831–35), where he began to publish stories in magazines. He first attracted attention with “MS. Found in a Bottle,” which won a contest and brought him to the attention of J.P. Kennedy, who got him an editorial position on the Southern Literary Messenger, although he was discharged because of his drinking. At Baltimore he obtained a license (1835) to marry his cousin, Mrs. Clemm's daughter Virginia, aged 13, and may have married her before the public ceremony (1836). Reemployed by the Messenger, he moved with Mrs. Clemm and Virginia to Richmond, where, before he was finally discharged (1837), he had published the unfinished tragedy Politian, 83 reviews, 6 poems, 4 essays, and 3 short stories, and greatly increased the magazine's circulation.

He moved his family to New York (1837–38), where he did hackwork and published The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, then going to Philadelphia, where as co‐editor of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine (1839–40) he contributed “The Fall of the House of Usher,” containing the previously published “Haunted Palace”; “William Wilson”; “The Journal of Julius Rodman”; “Morella”; and other works; and published Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840), his first collection, which included “Berenice”; “Ligeia,” containing “The Conqueror Worm”; “The Assignation”; “The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall”; and other stories. Leaving Burton, he made plans for his own magazine, which led to an acquaintance with T.H. Chivers, whose similar poetry caused attacks and counterattacks of plagiarism after Poe's death. Poe was literary editor of Graham's Magazine (1841–42), to which he contributed “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “A Descent into the Maelström,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” and other works, including some acute criticism which heightened his reputation. To the same magazine he later contributed “The Imp of the Perverse” (1845) and “The Philosophy of Composition” (1846). He came to know R.W. Griswold, who followed him as editor and bitterly attacked him after his death.

In 1842–43 he published “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” in a New York magazine, and won a prize in a Philadelphia newspaper for The Gold‐Bug, but even this did not help him, since he had wasted opportunities for further publication in Philadelphia. In New York (1844), he wrote “The Raven,” became associated with the New‐York Mirror, and as literary critic (1844–45) conducted his war there with Longfellow, whom he accused of plagiarism. These attacks he continued after becoming proprietor of the Broadway Journal (1845), where he also printed “The Pit and the Pendulum,” “Eleonora,” and The Premature Burial, and reprinted “The Tell‐Tale Heart” and other works. His eighth book, Tales (1845), reprinted previous works selected by E.A. Duyckinck, and included “The Black Cat” and “The Purloined Letter.” The Raven and Other Poems appeared the same year. Next associated with Godey's Lady's Book, Poe published “The Cask of Amontillado” and his articles on “The Literati of New York City,” whose harsh criticism of T.D. English prompted an answer, to which Poe replied with a successful libel suit.

Lacking regular employment, he with his wife and Mrs. Clemm nearly starved in their Fordham home, and Virginia died of tuberculosis during the winter. Although he published “Ulalume” and “The Domain of Arnheim,” and was at work on “The Bells” and Eureka, he was now more than ever in a thoroughly abnormal condition of body and mind, for which he attempted to find solace in the company of a Mrs. Shew, the poet Sarah Whitman, and the Mrs. Richmond addressed in To Annie. Torn between the love of the latter two, he attempted suicide. His erratic mind, depressed in personal affairs, nevertheless showed extreme exaltation in the lecture Eureka, in which he attempted to establish an all‐embracing theory of cosmogony. Upon his return to Richmond (1849), where he wrote “Annabel Lee,” he made a vigorous attempt to end his addiction to liquor, and became engaged to Mrs. Shelton, a former neighbor of the Allans, with whom he had had an early affair. On his way North to bring Mrs. Clemm to the wedding, he stopped in Baltimore, where five days afterward he was discovered in a delirious condition near a saloon that had been used for a voting place. It has been supposed that he was captured in a drunken condition by a political gang, which used him for the then common practice of repeating votes. Four days later he died, and was buried in Baltimore beside his wife.

There have been strongly divergent evaluations of Poe's literary significance, from Emerson's dismissal of him as “the jingle man” and Lowell's “three‐fifths genius and two‐fifths sheer fudge” to Yeats's declaration, “always and for all lands a great lyric poet.” The difference of opinion is at heart directed at his criticism, for the poetry consistently exemplifies the theories set forth in “The Philosophy of Composition,” “The Rationale of Verse,” and “The Poetic Principle,” in which he indicated his conception of poetic unity to be one of mood or emotion, and especially emphasized the beauty of melancholy. This romantic attitude has led to the criticism that his poetry is no more than a sustained tone, entirely dominated by its atmosphere. His reputation is also grounded on his use of the short story, which he preferred to the novel on the same basis that he preferred the short poem to the long. The stories may be said to fall into two categories, those of horror, set in a crepuscular world, and those of ratiocination, which set the standard for the modern detective story and conform to the critical theories expounded in Eureka. Although Poe was strongly influenced by many authors—e.g. Tennyson in his poetry, Coleridge in his criticism, and C.B. Brown in his fiction—he himself proved a source of influence on such Americans as Bierce and Hart Crane, and such Englishmen as Rossetti, Swinburne, Dowson, and Stevenson, besides having a profound effect on the French Symbolists.

Poe, Edgar Allan (1809–49), critic. The famed American poet and short‐story writer was the son of actors, although he was not raised by them. In 1835 he published sections of an unfinished blank‐verse drama, Politian, and later he occasionally wrote theatrical criticism for various publications, including the Broadway Journal, of which he became owner. As with much of his critical writings, he argued against what he deemed superficial and foreign. However, Poe was a perceptive enough playgoer to quickly, and largely correctly, evaluate the merits of an American effort such as Fashion.

Poe, Edgar Allan (1809–49) US poet and short-story writer. Much of his finest poetry, such as The Raven (1845), deals with fear and horror in the tradition of the Gothic novel. Other works include the poem Annabel Lee (1849), and the stories The Fall of the House of Usher (1839), The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841), and The Pit and the Pendulum (1843).

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