The Life of Edgar Allan Poe

Podcast Transcript

Edgar Allan Poe was one of the most influential and haunting voices in American literature, a writer whose imagination reshaped horror, crime writing, science fiction, and the modern short story

Poe lived a life marked by poverty, personal loss, and professional struggle, yet from that turbulence he forged works of enduring power such as The Raven, The Tell-Tale Heart, and The Fall of the House of Usher.

His poetry explored obsession, beauty, and grief, while his tales of psychological terror probed the darkest corners of the human mind.

Learn about the life, death, and legacy of Edgar Allen Poe on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 19, 1809. He was the second of three children of his parents, David Poe Jr., and Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe, both of whom were actors.

In 1810, when Edgar was a year old, his father abandoned his family. During the next year, the young Poe children essentially became orphans after their mother died from tuberculosis.

After his mother’s death, Edgar was taken in by John Allan, becoming his foster son. Though Allan never formally adopted him, he gave the boy the name “Edgar Allan Poe,” the name by which Edgar was known for the rest of his life.

Allan was a merchant from Richmond, Virginia, who traded in a variety of commodities, including cloth, tobacco, tombstones, wheat, and slaves.

As a father figure, Allan alternated between being a strict disciplinarian and spoiling young Edgar rotten. He also ensured that Edgar was baptized into the Episcopal Church.

In 1815, Allan brought the family to the United Kingdom. While in the UK, Poe was sent to a grammar school in Irvine, Scotland. After attending the school for a year, Poe was sent back to England, where he continued his education. Poe and the Allans were in the UK for five years before sailing back to the United States.

In 1826, Poe registered to attend the University of Virginia. At the University, he wanted to study language. During this time, the University was in its infancy and had strict rules that the students needed to abide by. This included rules on gambling, alcohol, guns, tobacco, and horses.

Poe was one of the students who ignored these rules. He enjoyed partaking in gambling, causing him to become estranged from his foster father. Poe claimed that Allan had not provided him enough money for classes.

Despite Allan sending more money, Poe’s debts continued to increase. As a result, he dropped out of the University and moved back to Boston, where he supported himself by working odd jobs.

In 1827, Poe decided to join the military under the name Edgar A. Perry, as he knew he could not financially support himself. To join, he lied about his age, claiming to be 22, even though he was only 18.

Poe’s first position was at Fort Independence in Boston. During his time at the base, he published a collection of poetry. This book was 40 pages long and titled Tamerlane and Other Poems. 50 copies of the book were published under the author name of “A Bostonian,” but got almost no attention.

It featured youthful Romantic poems, including the long title piece about the conqueror Tamerlane, which reflected on ambition, lost love, and the cost of glory.

Of the 50 original copies, only 12 are believed to remain. A copy sold in 2009 for $662,500, a record for a book by an American writer.

Poe was moved around while in the military and was eventually promoted to artificer. This role was essentially that of a craftsman who repaired weapons and maintained equipment.

Poe ultimately served for two years and did well in the military, being promoted to the rank of sergeant major for the artillery. However, he wanted to end his five-year enlistment early.

To do so, Poe went to his commanding officer and revealed his real name and life circumstances. His officer had agreed to honorably discharge Poe from the military if Poe would reconcile with his foster father.

Poe wrote to Allan for months, but he was unsympathetic to Poe’s efforts at reconciliation. This only changed after Poe’s foster mother died in February of 1829.

Following his foster mother’s death, Poe visited her burial site. While there, Allan decided to support Poe in his efforts to gain admission to the United States Military Academy at West Point, NY.

With his foster father’s support, Poe was discharged from the military in April of 1829. Before attending school, he moved to Baltimore, Maryland, where he stayed with his Aunt, Maria Clemm, her daughter, Virginia Eliza Clemm, his brother, Henry, and his grandmother.

During his time in Baltimore, Poe received a review of his poetry from a critic named John Neal. This review was very positive, and Poe was incredibly thankful.

To show his appreciation, Poe dedicated a poem to Neal in his second book, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems, which was published in Baltimore in 1829.

Poe began as a cadet at West Point on July 1, 1830. Around the same time, Poe began to get into more quarrels with his foster father.

Allan had remarried, and this, combined with Allan having children outside of wedlock, led to a massive fight between Poe and Allan. This led Allan to disown Poe in October of 1830.

After being disowned, Poe decided to leave West Point by being court-martialed. This meant he wanted to be tried intentionally under military law. To do this, Poe decided to neglect his duties and disobey orders.

This worked, and Poe was tried on February 8, 1831. Poe decided to plead not guilty, despite knowing he obviously was. This decision worked, and he was dismissed.

After being discharged from the military, Poe moved to New York, where he published his third work, Poems. This was financed by donations from his former West Point cadet classmates.

The book was dedicated to “the U.S. Corps of Cadets.” The book included some republished poems and a few new ones.

After it was published, Poe decided to move back to Baltimore in March of 1831. A few short months after arriving, his brother Henry, who had been seriously ill, passed away.

Following the death of his brother, Poe stayed in Baltimore with his family and began to write more, this time switching from poetry to short stories. While his efforts to earn money solely through writing were relatively unsuccessful, he did eventually succeed.

One publication company, the Southern Literary Messenger, took an interest in Poe and published his first horror stories, “Metzengerstein” and “Berenice”. The latter was considered so horrifying and graphic that the magazine received complaints from its consumers.

It is about a man who becomes obsessed with his cousin’s teeth and extracts them after she was buried alive.

The magazine’s editor, Thomas White, eventually offered Poe a job, which Poe accepted. This led him to move to Richmond, Virginia, in 1835 for the position, though he was discharged shortly after for being drunk.

Poe then returned to Baltimore, where he got a marriage license to marry Virginia, his 13-year-old cousin, in September of 1835. Poe was 27.

There is little actual knowledge about the relationship between Poe and Virginia. Many today perceive the relationship as more familial, with Poe referring to her as “Sissy” and her mom as “Muddy” or “mother.” However, we will never know the true nature of the relationship.

In 1837, Poe officially left the Southern Literary Messenger and went to Philadelphia. There, he began to write more stories. The most notable of these stories was “The Murders in Rue Morgue,” which became the first modern detective story.

In this story, Poe became the first author to use the character of an “eccentric genius”, C. Auguste Dupin, who uses his brilliance to solve crimes. This later inspired characters like Sherlock Holmes.

Poe is also known as an early pioneer in the field of science fiction; most of the stories in this genre were actually considered comedies, which is far from his usual dark style.

While he explored various genres, Poe’s fame endures primarily due to his revolutionary contributions to horror. He completely transformed the genre by shifting the focus to more psychological forms of terror, delving into the internal darkness of humanity, its capacity for evil, and the consequences when that evil manifests.

The most famous piece Poe ever wrote was the poem, “The Raven,” which he wrote while living in New York City in 1845. The poem was an instant success, turning Poe into a household name.

Poe’s contemplations on lost love and his conviction that the death of a beautiful woman was the most poetic theme shaped his poem. Additionally, the work was inspired by various sources, including the talking raven in Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens.

Despite Poe being the first American author to earn a living solely from fiction, he struggled to support himself financially. The Raven, despite paying Poe only $15, gave him international success and created new financial opportunities.

However, despite the potential financial opportunities, Poe did not act on them.

At the time, he was dealing with personal struggles, as Virginia had fallen ill with tuberculosis. She died from the illness in 1847, resulting in Poe becoming unstable and erratic.

He fell into a period of drug and alcohol use and became involved with numerous different women, culminating in him reconnecting with an old flame, returning to Richmond, and getting engaged.

However, this marriage never went through, as Poe died in 1849 at the age of 40.

Before his death, Poe was found in a semi-conscious state in Baltimore at a tavern called Gunner’s Ball. He appeared to be inebriated and was wearing someone else’s clothes. His state was bad enough that he was taken to the hospital.

Poe was unable to explain why his condition was so poor or why he was wearing someone else’s clothes; instead, he kept yelling out “Reynolds” up until his death.

To this date, no one has a clue who or what he was referring to.

Poe passed away on October 7, 1849, at Washington University Hospital. All medical records relevant to the case, as well as his death certificate, have been lost.

His official cause of death was “phrenitis,” or inflammation of the brain. This was a common cause of death given to patients when the actual reason for their death was unknown.

Because of Poe’s mysterious death and his persona while alive, there has been a large amount of speculation about the true cause of death. In many ways, the mystery around his death is perfect for Poe, as he created a mystery around himself that will likely never be solved.

Following his death, traditions have been established to honor Poe. One of the most notable is that of the “Poe Toaster.”

For years, on Poe’s birthday, January 19th, between hours of 12:00 am and 6:00 am, an anonymous person crept into the Westminster Hall and Burying Ground, the Cemetery, where Poe is buried. The individual was dressed in a large black hat and a white scarf.

At the grave, they left a French cognac, a note, and roses. The tradition began perhaps as early as 1949 and continued into the late 1990s, after which a successor or imitator carried on the tradition sporadically before it ultimately ended in 2009.

In 2007, 92-year-old Sam Porpora, the historian at the Westminster Church, claimed that he had started the tradition to revive interest in the church, but there were several facts that didn’t fit his story, not the least of which was the fact that witnesses observed the toaster in the 1950s, and Porpora claimed he started it in the 1960s.

Edgar Allan Poe’s influence on literature continues to be seen to this day.

Poe influenced the horror genre, the creation of modern detective stories, and the development of science fiction, inspiring writers for almost two centuries.

Many authors emulate Poe’s signature approaches while making their own work. They use techniques such as rhythmic language, atmospheric description, and psychological complexity to create spine-chilling stories.

His tales of psychological horror shaped writers from H. P. Lovecraft to Stephen King, while his creation of the detective C. Auguste Dupin directly influenced Arthur Conan Doyle in the development of Sherlock Holmes.

Poe’s insistence that a short story should produce a single, unified emotional effect became a foundational principle of modern fiction, and his exploration of madness, guilt, beauty, and death helped define the tone of Gothic literature for generations.

The Executive Producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The Associate Producers are Austin Oetken and Cameron Kieffer.

Research and writing for this episode were provided by THE Olivia Ashe.

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