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Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston, Massachusetts.
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Rosalie and Edgar were placed in the care of adopted families. Rosalie was adopted by William Mackenzie and his wife in Richmond, Virginia, who gave Rosalie her middle name. Poe was adopted by the Allans. Of the three siblings, only Rosalie lived to relative old age.
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Elizabeth Arnold Poe, a British actress, and David Poe, Jr., an actor who was born in Baltimore. His father left the family early in Poe's life, and his mother passed away from tuberculosis when he was only three.
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His first poem was "Tamerlane." It is a poem by Edgar Allan Poe which follows a fictionalized accounting of the life of a Turkic conqueror historically known as Tamerlane.
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Poe enlisted in the U.S. Army under the name "Edgar A. Perry." He did well as a soldier, rising to the rank of sergeant major. He also continued to write. A book of his poetry was published anonymously.
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William Henry Leonard, who went by the name Henry, was born circa January 30, 1807. Henry, who was a heavy drinker and may have been an alcoholic, died of tuberculosis on August 1, 1831, in Baltimore, he was only twenty-four. Henry was buried at what is now Westminster Hall and Burying Ground, where his brother would be buried several years later.
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Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe was the wife of Edgar Allan Poe. The couple were first cousins and publicly married when Virginia Clemm was 13 and Poe was 27. Biographers disagree as to the nature of the couple's relationship.
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The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket is the only complete novel written by Edgar Allan Poe. The work relates the tale of the young Arthur Gordon Pym, who stows away aboard a whaling ship called the Grampus.
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Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque is a collection of previously published short stories by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1840.
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"The Raven" is a narrative poem by Edgar Allan Poe. First published in January 1845, the poem is often noted for its musicality, stylized language, and supernatural atmosphere.
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The disease and eventual death of his wife had a substantial effect on Edgar Allan Poe, who became despondent and turned to alcohol to cope. Her struggles with illness and death are believed to have affected his poetry and prose, where dying young women appear as a frequent motif, as in "Annabel Lee", "The Raven", and "Ligeia".
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One of the most recent theories about Poe's death suggests that the author succumbed to a brain tumor, which influenced his behavior before his death. When Poe died, he was buried, rather unceremoniously, in an unmarked grave in a Baltimore graveyard.
