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As curtains of red, orange, and gold begin to cascade through the trees and the wind starts to crisp, almost nothing sounds better to me than sitting by a window, hot beverage in hand, and reading an eerie tale.
Edgar Allan Poe has been my writing muse since I was a young teen who had just discovered Wattpad. I have spent countless hours combing through his stories, poetry, and essays and have taken every free-writing opportunity to turn in a paper on him throughout my schooling–and now my career. If you’ve heard the phrase “quoth the raven, nevermore,” you’ve heard of Poe.
So, as a Poe aficionado, I’m here to tell you his history goes much deeper than Baltimore and traces back to the South, to Richmond, Virginia.
Poe was just about as much of a tortured artist as they come, knowing grief and turmoil from the very genesis of his life. He was born to two traveling actors, David and Eliza Poe, though by the age of two, his father had abandoned his family and his mother had died from tuberculosis. After his parents died, John and Francis Allan, a wealthy merchant family, took him in and raised him in Richmond.
The Allan family, though never formally adopting him, brought him up as a respectable Virginian in their upper-class home. Throughout his pre-university schooling, he was a well-behaved, respectable, and charming student who excelled in his coursework.
Poe always had a knack for the written word, known for memorizing poetry, reading with fervor, and writing tales from a young age. When it came time to begin choosing a career, John Allan vehemently opposed Poe’s wish to become a writer and instead wished for him to pursue a career in business.
When Poe was set to attend the University of Virginia in 1826, Allan intentionally underfunded his education, hoping the financial pressure and stress would make Poe break and change his career path. Instead, he opened and perpetuated a very dark hole for Poe.
What initially began as begging and borrowing from local merchants at crippling interest rates turned into drinking and gambling. Unfortunately, he was not a successful gamester, and racked up $2,000 in debt (equivalent to roughly $68,000 today).
Poe begged Allan to help him pay his debts, but Allan refused, still hoping to change Poe’s mind on his career. Due to his outstanding debts, Poe was forced to leave the University of Virginia after only one semester. Out of spite, Poe ran from home, not wanting to give Allan the satisfaction, and enlisted in the army. During his time serving under a false identity and age, he was stationed at Fort Moultrie in South Carolina and Fortress Monroe back in Virginia. Using his military funds, he was able to publish his first book, Tamerlane and Other Poems.
In a shocking turn of events, Poe did quite well in the army, thanks to his sharp and educated mind, which allowed him to climb the ranks. However, as a creative in heart and soul, he grew bored and was honorably discharged after confessing to his false-identity enlistment.
Shortly after his discharge from the army, Poe returned to Virginia following the death of his foster mother, hoping to potentially reconcile with John Allan. Allan enlisted Poe at West Point, where he excelled academically, and for a while, their relationship was composed–until Allan remarried without telling Poe, sealing that he would never gain any inheritance or a place in the family. Working against Allan again for his actions, Poe began acting out at West Point, leading to his expulsion and the end of his relationship with Allan.
At this point, Poe quite literally became a starving artist. Living in extreme poverty, Poe published one more book, Poems, then fled to Baltimore to live with his aunt, Maria Clemm, and cousin, Virginia Clemm. With little financial success from his already published poetry, Poe shifted to prose and short stories, which led to his ultimate success as a writer.
Poe returned to Richmond with Maria and Virginia, and later married his cousin, who was only 13 years old at the time. Despite their 14-year age gap, the couple was deeply attached, and Poe saw Virginia as his muse.
After another stint in Virginia (with a few more to come), Poe took his family to Philadelphia. There, he published some of the works that continue to bring him great fame to this day, such as “The Fall of the House of Usher” and the story that bestowed him the title “the father of modern detective fiction,” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.”
Adding to the orphaning, destitution, and abandonment that already plagued Poe as a tortured artist, his wife came down with tuberculosis, suffering for five long years before her death. Hoping fresh air would heal Virginia, he moved his family to New York. Poe turned to alcohol and the written word to help him cope with the downfall of his wife. In the midst of great tragedy, Poe published what is, perhaps, his most triumphant work, “The Raven.”
As his spiral continued after her death, Poe continued to drink and write, and while his life was tragic, it certainly did not leave him short of inspiration. In the wake of his loss, he wrote “Annabel Lee,” a tragic story of young love lost to death, almost certainly mirroring the reality of his own life.
Yearning for companionship (as many of us do), Poe left New York and once again returned to Richmond to reconnect with a young love from his childhood, Elmira Royster Shelton. After proposing and planning to wed, Poe set out to gather his things and return to Richmond so they could begin their new life together.
Unfortunately, Poe’s final shot at happiness was cut short, bringing us to his mysterious demise. On October 3, 1849, a demented, semi-conscious Poe was found staggering outside of a polling tavern in Baltimore. To this day, no one knows why or how he got there. Even stranger, Poe was found wearing cheap, tattered clothing that did not belong to him.
Following a four-day stay in the hospital, floating in and out of both consciousness and hysteria, Poe died at the age of 40 on October 7th. Many theories float the internet and experts’ heads alike: rabies, poisoning, cooping (a form of political kidnapping), or even a serious beating.
What truly happened, of course, remains one of literature’s greatest mysteries.
Though his life was lamentable, shaky, and plagued, Poe’s mind for literature and for bringing the supernatural, macabre, and despair to life remains unmatched to this day. I hope reading this has prompted you to revisit a few of his chilling tales this October–and to remember that the shadows in them were cast by Southern soil.
For tales of Southern lore, click here.
