The History of Edgar Allan Poe

My research paper will cover the infamous Edgar Allan Poe. Going into detail about who he was as a person, where his work ethic came from, his name originated from and how he was discovered for his famous work.

His name is Edgar Allan Poe. Before his name included Allan he just went by Edgar Poe. Edgar Poe was born January 19, 1809 and was raised in Boston Massachusetts and was known to be the second child to Eliza and David Poe, who were both known actors in their time. As a child Edgar inherited his family financial stability, social inferiority, and their legacy of artistic talent.

Edgar's father had a drinking problem when he was younger which led him to abandon him once his little sister Rosalie was born. He was just two years old at that time. To make matters worse, Before Edgar was even three years old his mother Eliza Poe fell very ill with tuberculosis causing her to not make it leaving Edgar an orphan without his mother or father no longer in his life. He was then adopted by a couple named Francis and John Allan, both very wealthy people. This is where Edgar gets his middle name from, now becoming Edgar Allen Poe.

His now father John Allan put him through the best schools in town where He excelled in all subjects because he received the best education in Richmond Virginia. In 1825 Edgar attended University of Virginia at Charlottesville but were later told to drop out because of financial complications with his father, leading their relationship to deteriorate. Soon after Edgar left back to his hometown Boston he was then enlisted to leave for the army under the name Edgar Perry at the age of eighteen.

After a final break with the Allan's Edgar took on a full-time career in literary. Two years of unsuccessful poems he wrote and could not publish he received news that his father John Allan has passed in 1834 which left Edgar financially unstable with no help or guidance because he was left out of his will. In that same year Edgar met a new friend, John Pendleton Kennedy who was a lawyer and writer. He helped Edgars work get noticed which landed him his first job as an editor. He was able to keep this job for two years before venturing out to find better.

1836 Edgar Allan Poe married his youngest cousin Virginia Clemm, who was at the time only thirteen years old. Edgar was judged for the difference in age and how close they were in family, but he didn't let that stop him from reaching his dreams as a writer. In 1837 he then moved around a lot looking for work as an editor after several disagreements with each owner he worked for. He moved to New York first and then Philadelphia. Soon after settling in Philadelphia he landed an editorial staffing job in 1839 where he was able to publish two of his greatest stories Willi-am Williamson and The fall of the house of usher.

For the next two years (1840-1842) he has left two companies which were Burtons and Grahams, when he unsuccessfully could not establish his own literary magazine. Between 1842-1844 after Edgar moved back to New York to join the editorial staff of New York Mirror, he published many of his most important stories including The masque of the red death and The pit and the Pendulum

In 1845, he achieved popular success with his most famous poem The Raven. In 1846 Edgar got involved in scandal that led his work to stop being published. In 1847 his wife Virginia Clemm health started to decline, and she became very ill and she died. Around this time Edgar could not handle all that was happening to him from the scandal and his wife passing his health started to take a turn for the worst.

By 1849 he traveled for the last time to Richmond Virginia to make his last public appearance he was later found unconscious in the streets of Baltimore Maryland and then sent to Washington college hospital where he never recovered and later died.

Although Edgar Allan Poe had rough times as a child growing up and losing people closes to him he never gave up being an editor. He was a genius who took his work serious and would do whatever it took to be seen. He took on all jobs and tried his best to be noticed, even when he failed he never let that stop him. He never got the opportunity to witness his work become as popular as it is today because of his unexpected death, but his poems are well the talk of the town, especially Tell-Tale Heart one of his most famous poems read all over.

Edgar Allan Poe was too often thought of as an author who made vivid and insignificant horror stories. Edgars personality was often seen as erroneously and maligned. He has been called all names, but because of those myths his work often was not taken seriously. Truth is Edgar Allan Poe both in criticism and in his dark mysterious stories, helped create a literature that made America a cultural force to not be ignored.

I enjoyed doing research on Edgar Allan Poe because I knew with all his famous poems there had to be a back story to why he wrote his stories the way he did. Like the Tell-Tale heart, very disturbing poem but it was his way of bringing in an audience and it sure did catch the eyes of a lot of people as well as myself. He told his stories as if they were his life. I would believe they were just by all that he has experienced growing up, but I salute him for not giving up and being a great poet for us all today.

Cite this page