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Poe is born to two very poor parents.(Shmoop)
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Both of Poe's parents die of toburculoses.
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Poe writes his first poem titled "Last night, with many cares & toils oppres'd,/ Weary, I laid me on a couch to rest."
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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.(Shmoop)
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Poe—now 27 years old—marries his thirteen-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm, at a ceremony in Richmond, Virginia.(Shmoop)
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Poe's first novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, is published.(Shmoop)
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Poe begins as an editor at Graham's Magazine, where he works until May 1842. The magazine runs Poe's short story "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," the first-ever entry in a genre now known as the detective story.(Shmoop)
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Poe's wife dies of toburculoses.
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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.(Shmoop)
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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.(Shmoop)
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