Chronology
1809 Born in Boston to actors David Poe and Elizabeth Arnold Poe. Father born in Baltimore, son of Irish-born emigrant David Poe, Sr., American quartermaster during the Revolutionary War. English-born mother came to United States in 1796; wedded David Poe in 1805. Older brother William Henry Leonard Poe born in 1807.
1811 Mother dies of tuberculosis in Richmond, one year after birth of daughter, Rosalie. Father had abandoned family; likely died of tuberculosis in 1811. Richmond merchant John Allan and wife Frances become foster parents of Edgar; grandparents in Baltimore care for brother Henry, while Mackenzie family of Richmond welcomes Rosalie.
1815 Accompanies John and Frances Allan to England, where Allan opens a branch of his mercantile firm, Ellis and Allan, in London. Edgar visits Allan family relatives in Scotland and the following year enters boarding school in London as “Edgar Allan.”
1816 Paternal grandfather David Poe, Sr., dies in Baltimore.
1818 Enters Reverend Bransby’s Manor House School in Stoke Newington.
1820 Economic reverses compel Allan to close his London branch and return with family to Richmond, where Poe enrolls in Richmond Academy using his family name.
1822 Composes an ode for departing teacher, Joseph H. Clarke; cousin Virginia Clemm born in Baltimore.
1823 Enters William Burke’s school; meets Jane Stith Stanard, mother of a friend.
1824 Mourns death of Mrs. Stanard; makes six-mile swim in James River.
1825 Allan inherits a fortune, purchases a Richmond mansion; Poe becomes engaged to Sarah Elmira Royster.
1826 Enters University of Virginia; excels academically but incurs gambling debts; returns to Richmond, where Mr. Royster forbids daughter’s marriage to Poe.
1827 Quarrels with Allan and leaves home; sails to Boston under an alias; enlists in U.S. Army as Edgar A. Perry. Calvin F. S. Thomas publishes Tamerlane and Other Poems; Poe sails to South Carolina for duty at Fort Moultrie.
1828 Seeks release from army commitment; Elmira Royster marries Alexander Shelton; Poe and his unit relocate to Fortress Monroe, Virginia.
1829 Receives promotion to sergeant major and plans to seek appointment to West Point. Foster mother, Frances Allan, dies in Richmond. Poe hires military replacement and receives honorable discharge; moves to Baltimore, lodges at hotels and with relatives, seeks publisher for new poetry volume. Hatch and Dunning publish Poe’s Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems.
1830 Receives appointment to U.S. Military Academy; excels in French and mathematics. John Allan remarries, leaves New York without contacting Poe, forbids further communication.
1831 Devastated by Allan’s rejection, Poe neglects military duties, faces court-martial, receives dismissal. Finds New York publisher for third volume of verse; Elam Bliss issues Poems, purchased by 131 cadets. Poe moves to Baltimore, takes up residence with grandmother and aunt, writes tales in response to newspaper contest. Brother William Henry Leonard Poe dies of consumption. John Allan, Jr., born in Richmond. Baltimore beset by cholera epidemic; Poe experiences long illness. Delia S. Bacon wins Saturday Courier contest.
1832 Philadelphia Saturday Courier publishes “Metzengerstein” and four more tales by Poe. John Allan, in failing health, revises his will. Second Allan son born. Poe tutors cousin Virginia, seeks employment.
1833 Baltimore Saturday Visiter announces literary contest; Poe submits several new tales and poems. “MS. Found in a Bottle” wins fifty-dollar prize for fiction. John Pendleton Kennedy offers Poe’s “Tales of the Folio Club” to a Philadelphia publisher. Poe does odd jobs for Kennedy and the Visiter.
1834 Godey’s Lady’s Book publishes “The Visionary” (later called “The Assignation”). Poe rebuffed by Allan in last meeting in Richmond; Allan dies six weeks later, leaving Poe without an inheritance. Thomas W. White launches Southern Literary Messenger. Henry C. Carey declines to publish Poe’s tales.
1835 Kennedy aids destitute Poe; recommends him to White as prospective employee. Poe contributes “Berenice” and other tales to Messenger, writes reviews, offers advice to White. Grandmother Elizabeth Poe dies in Baltimore. Poe travels to Richmond to apply for teaching position; assists White; suffers suicidal crisis; returns to Baltimore, perhaps to marry Virginia secretly. Returns to Richmond with Virginia and Mrs. Clemm as housemates; resumes work at Messenger, publishes many reviews, reprints his tales and poems, and expands journal’s national reputation.
1836 Marries Virginia in public ceremony; enjoys acclaim as editor, despite White’s refusal to confer title; publishes many reviews, notes, and essays. Harper & Brothers decline to publish “Folio Club” tales; advise Poe to write novel. White threatens to fire Poe for drinking.
1837 White dismisses Poe. Messenger publishes two installments of Poe’s novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. With wife and mother-in-law, Poe moves to New York, completes novel, and secures contract with Harper & Brothers. Panic of 1837 postpones publication of Pym; Poe remains unemployed and impoverished.
1838 Relocates to Philadelphia; unsuccessfully seeks employment. Harper & Brothers publish Pym; novel receives mixed reviews. Poe publishes “Ligeia” in Baltimore American Museum. Allows Thomas Wyatt to use his name as author of textbook on seashells.
1839 Obtains position at Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine; meets Philadelphia literati; publishes “William Wilson” in The Gift and “The Fall of the House of Usher” in Burton’s. Lea & Blanchard publish Poe’s Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in December. Poe issues challenge in Alexander’s Weekly Messenger to solve any cryptogram submitted by readers.
1840 Begins serialization of “The Journal of Julius Rodman” in Burton’s; solves cryptograms in Alexander’s; accuses Longfellow of plagiarism. Burton dismisses Poe for issuing Penn Magazine prospectus; project elicits encouragement from many quarters. Poe meets Frederick W. Thomas; contributes “The Man of the Crowd” to newly created Graham’s Magazine; suffers prolonged illness that delays Penn.
1841 Financial crisis further postpones Penn. Poe takes job on Graham’s staff; publishes “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “A Descent into the Maelström.” Meets Rufus Griswold; plans to edit new monthly magazine in collaboration with George Graham and solicits work from noted American authors, but privately seeks government appointment through Thomas. Graham’s publishes Poe’s features on “Secret Writing” and “Autography.”
1842 Virginia Poe suffers pulmonary hemorrhage that signals consumption; Poe drinks to relieve sorrow. Interviews Charles Dickens; resigns position at Graham’s. Renews efforts to obtain patronage job through Tyler administration; makes abortive visit to New York seeking editorial work. Fails to receive government appointment; publishes “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt,” based on death of Mary Rogers in New York.
1843 James Russell Lowell’s Pioneer publishes “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Poe enlists publisher Thomas C. Clarke as partner in projected magazine now called The Stylus. Drinks heavily during disastrous visit to Washington in quest of patronage appointment; offends Thomas Dunn English there; loses support of Clarke, who commissions English to write temperance novel. Wins one hundred dollars in Dollar Newspaper contest with “The Gold-Bug”; fails to obtain government position; delivers lecture, “American Poetry,” in several cities. English’s serialized novel, The Doom of the Drinker, caricatures Poe.
1844 Enters most productive year as writer; moves to New York; creates sensation with New York Sun hoax on transatlantic balloon flight. Explores new strategies to launch Stylus; writes “Doings of Gotham” dispatches for Columbia (Pennsylvania) Spy; publishes “The Purloined Letter” and joins editorial staff of Evening Mirror.
1845 Develops connections with Young America group and Evert Duyckinck; publishes “The Raven” and becomes literary celebrity; joins staff of Broadway Journal, acquiring part ownership, and there renews attacks on Longfellow as plagiarist. Graham’s publishes biographical sketch of Poe by Lowell. Attends literary salons and meets New York literati; bec
omes enamored of poet Frances S. Osgood; creates scandal by reading “Al Aaraaf” at Boston Lyceum. Duyckinck publishes two volumes of Poe’s work in “Library of American Books.” Acquires full ownership of Broadway Journal through loans; struggles to keep newspaper afloat; suspends publication at year’s end.
1846 Becomes embroiled in controversy over indiscreet letters to Mrs. Osgood; brawls with English; serializes “The Literati of New York City” in Godey’s, satirizing English and others. Moves to Fordham cottage as Virginia’s consumption worsens; publishes “The Cask of Amontillado”; suffers from poor health and poverty. European translations extend Poe’s reputation abroad.
1847 Virginia dies; Poe remains ill but sues English and Evening Mirror for libel; recovers health through care of Mrs. Shew. Wins lawsuits and receives damages; visits Washington and Philadelphia; composes “Ulalume.”
1848 Revives plans for Stylus; gives lectures called “The Universe” and begins Eureka; exchanges poems with Sarah Helen Whitman. Lectures in Massachusetts and meets Annie Richmond. George P. Putnam publishes Eureka; Poe visits Providence and proposes to Mrs. Whitman; visits, confides in Mrs. Richmond. Takes overdose of laudanum; lectures in Providence and resumes drinking; Mrs. Whitman accepts, then breaks off marriage plans.
1849 Corresponds with Mrs. Richmond, who inspires “For Annie”; publishes “Hop-Frog” and other tales in Boston antislavery newspaper; receives proposal from Edward Patterson to publish Stylus in Illinois. Begins journey to solicit subscriptions; drinks heavily in Philadelphia, suffers delirium tremens, and spends night in prison; sells “Annabel Lee” and “The Bells” to John Sartain, who rescues him. Reestablishes relationship with recently widowed Sarah Elmira Royster Shelton in Richmond; lectures on poetry; takes temperance pledge but lapses into insobriety. Proposes to Mrs. Shelton, who accepts; departs for New York; stops at Baltimore, lapses into unconsciousness after drinking binge; dies on October 7 in Washington Hospital. Buried in Baltimore, October 8.
A Note on Texts
The texts of Poe’s published works are in the public domain. In this edition, taking advantage of recent textual scholarship and generally following the principles of modern bibliography in establishing the texts to be published, I have endeavored to present the most readable and reliable versions of Poe’s works. That is, I have attempted to reproduce the last published version over which the author had editorial control. For the fiction and poetry, I have mostly relied on the Redfield edition of The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Rufus W. Griswold. Whatever animus Griswold bore for Poe (and betrayed in his introductory memoir), he took the trouble to reproduce, in most cases, the latest versions of each work, sometimes inserting subsequent authorial revisions that Poe had inscribed marginally in late publications of his work. Yet the Redfield edition did not incorporate all of those revisions, and in several tales and poems I have included further emendations thanks to electronic texts provided by the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore. I thank Jeffrey A. Savoye for his kind cooperation.
Griswold’s edition of 1850-56 also included a number of misprints and typographical errors, which I have silently corrected. For the sake of readability, I have also added accents omitted from foreign words and (in a very few cases) corrected spelling errors. I have also compared my versions of the poetry and tales with those established by Thomas O. Mabbott, sometimes adopting editorial revisions made by Mabbott and in a few cases correcting his texts.
My texts for the critical essays and opinions—some of which appeared in Griswold’s edition—ultimately derive from the original periodical sources. These writings were not revised by Poe and so present few editorial problems. For the letters, I have relied on the texts established by John Ward Ostrom in the two-volume 1948 Harvard edition, used with permission of the Gordian Press, which now holds the copyright.
TALES
Poe considered the domain of the short prose tale less “elevated” than that of the poem but more extensive and thus more conducive to innovation. He noted that the author of a tale “may bring to his theme a vast variety of modes or inflections of thought.” The seventy-odd narratives that he published between 1832 and 1849 represent a surprisingly diverse body of fiction marked by ongoing experimentation and compulsive revision. Throughout his career Poe continued to rewrite even his greatest stories; as late as 1848, for example, he was still recasting “Ligeia.” For the title of his first volume of stories, he used the terms “grotesque” and “arabesque” to characterize their “prevalent tenor,” the former connoting deformity or ugliness and the latter fantastic intricacy. He regarded his arabesque tales as more serious productions, “phantasy-pieces” associated unfairly by critics with “ ‘Germanism’ and gloom.” Elsewhere he identified “tales of ratiocination” (detection) and “tales of effect” (sensation) as notable varieties of prose fiction, having already produced key examples of both. Although he critically disparaged allegory, he ventured into that mode in such works as “William Wilson” and “The Masque of the Red Death.” Poe’s experiments in short narrative also included prose poems, spiritualized dialogues, and landscape sketches. He purposely blurred the line between the expository essay and the tale, between fact and fiction, in both “The Premature Burial” and “The Imp of the Perverse.” Essays such as “The Philosophy of Furniture” have sometimes been included among his tales, as have certain anecdotal reviews. Some of the articles that he composed to accompany magazine illustrations can likewise stand as independent tales.
Poe’s contributions to the tale as a literary genre include what is often regarded as the earliest theory of the short story form, four paragraphs (see pp. 534-36) tucked in a review of Hawthorne’s Twice-Told Tales. His emphasis on “single effect” to intensify Gothic sensation led him to compose unified narratives in which orchestrated actions, images, and impressions culminate in a striking conclusion. In such tales as “Ligeia,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” or “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar,” the ending produces horror through shock: a sudden, final transformation exceeds expectation. If Poe did not originate surprise endings in the tale, he popularized and perfected them. More significantly, perhaps, he experimented with first-person narration and demonstrated the unsettling effect of an irrational, unreliable narrator, whose gradual, seemingly inadvertent betrayal of derangement undermines his own version of events while implying another. From “Berenice” to “The Cask of Amontillado,” Poe created I-narrators who calmly and methodically disclose their mad compulsions, producing in “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat” his most penetrating analyses of psychopathic violence.
Poe also developed narrative prototypes for science fiction and the modern detective story. In an early work (“The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall”), he mixed science and satire to describe a balloon flight to the moon, but in a later, more plausible narrative (“The Balloon Hoax”), he embraced strict verisimilitude, extrapolating from scientific data to chronicle an imagined flight across the Atlantic. In “MS. Found in a Bottle” he traced an incredible voyage toward an immense vortex at the South Pole, and in his only full-length novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, he incorporated (and plagiarized) scientific observations by actual South Sea explorers to “authenticate” a fantastic account of the polar region. Such scientific hoaxes as “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” illustrate his credo that “the most vitally important point in fiction” is that of “earnestness or verisimilitude.” Poe used the semblance of reality to mystify his reader, serving up palpable fiction as positive fact. His fascination with criminology and investigative ratiocination, already apparent in “The Man of the Crowd,” yielded a trio of Parisian crime tales featuring C. August Dupin. Exercises in rational analysis also figure in “A Descent into the Maelström,” “The Gold-Bug,” and “The Oblong Box.”
Although often associated with Gothic tales of terror, Poe devoted roughly half of his fiction to humor, producing satires, burlesques, parodies, and s
poofs. Several of these pieces now seem too silly, affected, or topical to engage modern readers, and a handful appear to be dashed off for the sake of money alone. But certain comic narratives cleverly lampoon the sensational tale as popularized in Blackwood’s Magazine, and other farces mock national myths and illusions. Even supposedly serious tales include grimly comic touches: Poe’s love of jokes and puns gives manic hilarity to “The Cask of Amontillado,” and a similar sardonic humor animates “Hop-Frog,” while “The Premature Burial” ends with an unexpected joke on the reader.
During the first decade of his magazine career, Poe devoted himself almost exclusively to foreign subjects: predicaments or conflicts grounded in Old World places—Venice, London, Paris, and other locales vaguely European. Nearly all of his greatest tales—such as “Ligeia,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” or “William Wilson”—impute to foreign settings a strangeness that supplements the uncanny effect of narrative events. From “Metzengerstein” through “The Masque of the Red Death” and “The Pit and the Pendulum,” Poe portrayed a distinctly imaginary Europe marked by decadence, rivalry, tyranny, and corruption—by the very evils from which the young republic naively supposed itself liberated. But by the early 1840s, literary nationalism had made American subjects and materials nearly obligatory, and beginning with “The Gold-Bug,” set in South Carolina, Poe pragmatically shifted his fiction toward domestic scenes and situations. Yet he refused to rewrite history for the sake of American mythmaking and argued defiantly that national literature was a contradiction in terms. Convinced that “the world at large [is] the true audience of the author,” Poe continued to prefer foreign themes and crafted several late European tales—such as “The Cask of Amontillado”—dramatizing universal human passions.
The Portable Edgar Allan Poe Page 4