It's Edgar Allan Poe's Birthday
Robyn Williams
It's the birthday of the man who gave us The Black Cat, The Tell-Tale Heart, and the Murders in the Rue Morgue. His gothic legacy inspired generations of murder, mayhem, and fear. Here's some interesting facts and philosophies surrounding this dark American son.
Born in Boston in 1809, Poe spent his first years in a family of actors soon separated by abandonment and death, when he landed in the charitable Richmond, Virginia, home of John and Frances Allan, a legacy whom he would take as a middle name. Raised in wealth, he was the heir apparent. John and Frances lavished love on him, including extended time in Europe and promises that his education would be paid, but bad feelings between his adoptive father eventually led to a stormy separation in 1827 and 1830, while he was rising to sergeant major in the army and publishing his first book of poems, Tamerlane. By the end of his West Point career, he agreed to be discharged under economic duress, as John Allan took a younger wife and Poe realized that he would never inherit the money he enjoyed in his early life.
In the 1830s, he would live with and tie his fortunes to a cousin, Mary, another important mother figure. Her daughter Virginia would become his wife at the age of thirteen. Edgar and Virginia, with her mother, moved from city to city as he wrote, criticized, and established himself in the literary world. But always Poe was haunted by failure: endless literary feuding, his alcoholism, and his inability to get along very well with people were three of the factors of his anxiety, as well as watching Virginia slowly begin to exhibit the consumption symptoms that had killed Poe's own mother. On January 30, 1847, Virginia Poe died. By that time, the family had endured starvation, low opinions and accusations of plagiarism, and more volatile work with voting.
By 1849, during his travels, Poe would be discovered near a polling place, allegedly set upon by a gang, and die four days later in the hospital. The wonder is not that Poe began totally to disintegrate but that he nevertheless continued to produce work of very high caliber to the end. His dark twists and turns were not only chilling, but reflective of the emerging industrialization and compartmentalization of the new age. Here are a few additional articles on Poe's writing and influence.
