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Poe's Born
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Poe's Lifespan
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Parents' Death
Elizabeth Arnold Poe dies of tuberculosis in Richmond, Virginia. Within days, David Poe also dies of tuberculosis. With no parents to take care of them, the three children of the family are split up. Henry goes to live with his paternal grandparents. A Richmond couple, John and Frances Allan, take in Edgar as a foster child. Rosalie is taken in by another Richmond family named Mackenzie. Both Edgar and Rosalie adopt their foster families' names as their middle names. -
Trip To England
The Allan family sails to London, where Edgar enrolls in school. -
Back to the USA
Five years after leaving America for England, the Allans return to Richmond, Virginia. -
First Poem
A fifteen-year-old Edgar Allan Poe pens his first known poem: "Last night, with many cares & toils oppres'd,/ Weary, I laid me on a couch to rest." -
College
Poe enrolls midway through the academic year at the University of Virginia, which had opened less than a year before. -
Splits With Allans
After running up a $2,000 gambling debt while at college, Poe gets into an argument with his foster father when John Allan refuses to give him money to settle the debt. Poe ditches college and the Allans. He moves to Baltimore to join relatives there. -
Splits With Allans
After running up a $2,000 gambling debt while at college, Poe gets into an argument with his foster father when John Allan refuses to give him money to settle the debt. Poe ditches college and the Allans. He moves to Baltimore to join relatives there. -
Soldier and Published Author
Poe enlists in the U.S. Army under the name "Edgar A. Perry." Shortly after, his first book—a poetry collection entitled Tamerlane and Other Poems—is published. The author is listed only as "A Bostonian." "For all of his problems, in the course of his relatively short life Poe revitalized American literature, producing perfectly crafted stories and poems while creating whole new genres (we have Poe to thank for the detective story, for example)" (Shmoop). -
Death of Foster Mother
Poe's foster mother, Frances Allan, with whom he was still close, dies in Richmond. Poe—by now a sergeant major in the Army—obtains leave to travel to her funeral. -
West Point
Poe is appointed to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. A few months later he publishes his second book of poetry, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems. -
First Novel
Poe's first novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, is published. -
Death of Wife
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Engaged Again
Poe travels to Richmond and convinces his childhood sweetheart, Elmira Royster Shelton, to become his fiancée. He joins the Sons of Temperance, an organization that forbids drinking (sort of like a nineteenth-century equivalent of Alcoholics Anonymous). The next month, Poe travels to Baltimore. -
Poe's Death
After being found unconscious in a Baltimore gutter, Edgar Allan Poe is taken to the hospital and pronounced dead of causes still unknown. He is buried at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Baltimore.