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Edgar Poe was born in Boston Massachusetts. He was an american author,poet, and literary critic. Poe was the first known American writer to try to earn a living through living alone, resulting in a financialy difficult life and career.
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Poe's sister rosalie is born. Shortly after her birth, or possible even before it, his father, David Poe, leaves the family and the mother alone with the children.
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Elizabeth Arnold Poe dies of tuberculosis in Richmond, Virginia. Within days David Poe dies of the same cause. The three children of the family were split up. They all go into foster care with other families. Edgar and rosalie take their foster family names as their middle names.
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A fifteen year old Edgar Allen Poe wrote his first poem. "Last night, with many cares & toils oppres'd/ Weary, I laid me on a couch to rest".
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Having found out that his first love at home, Elmira Royster, was engaged to someone else, and feuding with his foster father, Poe enlisted in the U.S. Army as “Edgar A. Perry” in the spring of 1827.
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William Henry Leonard Poe, Edgar’s older brother, dies in Baltimore, most likely to the cause of tuberculosis or cholera.
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The couple were first cousins and married when Virginia Clemm was 13 and Poe was 27. Some biographers have suggested that the couple's relationship was more like that between brother and sister than like husband and wife in that they may have never consummated their marriage.
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In July of 1838, Poe's first and only complete novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, is published. Many of the reviews from others include negative comments.
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Poe's story collection was said to be intended to defend himself from criticism of "Germanism", Poe wrote in the preface, "If in many of my productions terror has been the thesis, I maintain that terror is not of Germany but of the soul". Reviews of the stories were mixed.
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Poe publishes another poem titled "The Raven". At the time of its publication, The Raven was extremely successful, and brought significant fame to Poe and his writings. However, it did not bring him the financial success he needed.
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After five years of Illness, Virinia Poe dies of tuberculosis at the age of 24. It was Virginia's death that sent Edgar Allan Poe into a downward spiral.
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In the days leading up to his death, Poe was found delirious on the streets of Baltimore, "in great distress, and ... in need of immediate assistance." On October 7th, 1849, at the age of 40, Poe died in the hospital. The exact cause of Poe's death is unknown, but several theories such as alcoholism, suicide, and even rabies have been suggested.
