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Edgar Allan Poe is Born
Poe was an American author, poet, editor, and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story, and is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. -
Poe’s Sister is born
Shortly after her birth, or possibly even before it, David Poe deserts the family, leaving Poe's mother alone with three children. Making matters worse, Elizabeth Poe soon falls ill with tuberculosis. -
Poe’s Parents Die
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. -
Poe writes his 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. -
Poe enlists in the U.S. Army and shortly after his first book is published.
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." -
Poe’s older brother dies
William Henry Leonard Poe was a sailor, amateur poet and the older brother of Edgar Allan Poe and Rosalie Poe. He died of tuberculosis in 1831 at the age of twenty-four. -
Poe marries his thirteen year old cousin, Virginia Clemm
Poe—now 27 years old—marries his thirteen-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm, at a ceremony in Richmond, Virginia. Clemm and Poe lived together off and on for several years before their marriage. The couple often moved to accommodate Poe's employment. -
Poe writes his first novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym
This is the only complete novel written by American writer Edgar Allan Poe. The work relates the tale of the young Arthur Gordon Pym, who stows away aboard a whaling ship called the Grampus. Various adventures and misadventures befall Pym, including shipwreck, mutiny, and cannibalism, before he is saved by the crew of the Jane Guy. -
Poe's story collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque is published in two volumes
Sometime after 1835, having failed to find a publisher, Poe abandoned his proposed Tales of the Folio Club, but not the idea of a collected edition of his prose fiction. Dropping the apparatus of a literary club, and the “burlesques upon criticism,” he combined the original tales with additional items which had appeared in the pages of the Southern Literary Messenger. This new collection of 25 stories became Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque. -
Poe publishes the poem, The Raven
Poe publishes the poem , The Raven in the New York Evening Mirror. It is wildly successful, bringing the writer the fame and fortune that have long eluded him. He soon becomes editor and owner of a magazine called the Broadway Journal, a doomed enterprise that is already in debt when Poe takes over. -
Poe's wife Virginia dies of tuberculosis at their home in the Bronx
Poe's wife Virginia dies of tuberculosis at their home in the Bronx. Poe has been so despondent during the final months of her illness that friends thought he was going insane. The loss of his wife sends Poe into a downward spiral of alcoholism. -
Edgar Allen Poe Dies
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.
