By Elizabeth Switaj

People often refer to Edgar Allan Poe as the father of the detective story–and to "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" as the first of that genre–so it may seem appropriate that much of Poe's life story remains mired in mystery. Rufus Griswold, his literary executor, wrote a scathing obituary of Poe, depicting him as a sadistic drug addict and alcoholic. This has lead many to falsely consider Poe as the origin of his own dark characters.

Upon his birth in Boston on January 19, 1809, his parents– regular members of the troupe then performing at the Federal Street Theater–named him Edgar Poe. Shortly before his mother's death in Richmond, Virginia on December 8, 1811, his father abandoned the family. John Allan–a wealthy tobacco merchant in Richmond–brought Poe into the family (at his wife's request), and gave him the middle name Allan as a baptismal name, though he never formally adopted him. Allan's treatment of Poe remains controversial. Some view him as abusive, while others view him as merely authoritarian, which would, however, prove severely detrimental to anyone with a poet's sensitivity; still another, smaller group of biographers view him as the ideal guardian for a poet. Clearly, though, Allan never treated Poe with sensitivity.

In 1815, the Allan family moved to England on business. There, Poe entered the Manor-House School in Stoke-Newington, a London suburb. This school taught him Latin and French, but more importantly, the gothic architecture and historical landscape of the region made a deep imprint on his youthful imagination, which would effect his adult writings.

The Allans left England in June 1820, and arrived in Richmond on August 2. Here, Poe entered the English and Classical School of Joseph H. Clarke, a graduate of Trinity College in Dublin. His studies in French and Latin continued, and though he lacked diligence in studying, he distinguished himself as an "excellent classicist" and "the best reader of Latin verse". He wrote a volume of verse to the little girls of Richmond, joined the Thespian Society, engaged prominently in debate, and earned the rank of Lieutenant of the Richmond Junior Volunteers, who acted as a body guard during Lafayette's October 1824 visit. Despite this, he never gained popularity among his schoolmates–perhaps his impoverished roots abraded the aristocrats–but rather he found his friends among the younger set, whom he could easily entertain with wild tales.

On February 14, 1826, Poe (then 17) entered the University of Virginia, taking classes in Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, and Italian. Though he spent more time gambling and drinking than studying and often arrived to class unprepared, he won top honors in French and Latin. On June 17, 1826, he was elected to the Jefferson Literary and Debating Society, but he rarely presented his original works, preferring to give private readings in his room. He successfully painted himself as an aristocrat–even fighting a duel with his former roommate–but at the end of the year left the university in disgrace, because Allan refused to pay his $2,000 gambling debt (not due to expulsion as Griswold claimed).

On May 26, 1827, Poe enlisted in the US Army under the name Edgar A. Perry. He joined Battery H of the 1st Artillery, then stationed at Fort Independence. While Poe served there, Calvin F.S. Thomas printed Poe's first book, Tamerlane and Other Poems–a slim volume, which failed to earn any fame or money. On October 31, the Battery moved to Fort Moultrie in Charleston, South Carolina, and one year later moved to Fort Monroe in Virginia. His foster-mother died on February 28, 1829, and on April 15–likely at her request–Allan obtained Poe's release from the army by providing a substitute.

Poe then visited Baltimore, and arranged for the printing of another slim volume, entitled Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems. Then, Allan–considering it an honorable way to discharge of his ward–obtained an appointment for him as a cadet, so on July 1, 1830 he entered West Point Military Academy, making his residence at No. 28 in the South Barracks. While there, he portrayed himself as the hero of a romantic sea voyage; while most present-day biographers consider this merely a tale spun for his compatriots' benefits, a few think that it may have at least a basis in an actual trip to Europe–possibly Russia. Poe's military career, however, flopped. The discipline and Allan's failure to provide financial support (a poor man with literary ambitions could never find satisfaction in a military career) chafed him enough that he disobeyed orders to get himself court-martialed on January 2, 1831, but to pay back the military he remained in the service until March 6. Immediately after his dismissal, he published a third volume of poetry–this one dedicated to "the US Corps of Cadets", for he had taken a subscription from them to raise funds (as he left the service with 24 cents to his name).

He then settled in Baltimore with his impoverished aunt, Maria Clemm; her daughter, Virginia Clemm, a woman talented in music; and his older brother, William Henry Leonard, whom his grandfather, General Poe, had raised. At the time Leonard seemed more talented in writing than Poe, but he died in July. In 1832, Philadelphia's Saturday Courier published five of his short stories. More importantly, in 1833, he won $100 in the Baltimore Sunday Visitor's short story contest

After unsuccessfully seeking work as a teacher in Baltimore, returned in August, 1835 to Richmond, where the Richmond Academy was advertising for a professor of English. After another person got that job, Thomas Willis White hired him–at first on a temporary basis–as an editor at The Southern Literary Messenger, in which he published short stories, poems, and ascerbic literary reviews. In October, the Clemms joined him, and in May he married Virginia, then 13-years old. After an 1836 printer's strike caused financial woes for the magazine, Poe and White quarreled over both the acidness of his criticism and the irresponsibility of his drinking.

The rest of his life, Poe suffered from severe mental depression and declining physical health (possibly caused by malnutrition and severe drinking binges), but moments of intense creativity punched through this pain. In 1838, he published his only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, and one year later he became coeditor of Philadelphia's monthly Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, where he printed "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839) and his sonnet, "Silence" (1840). In December, 1839, his first collection of short stories, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, appeared, but it sold less than 750 copies. Within a few months of this, he lost his job–again due to the severity of his criticisms and excessiveness of his drinking–so he moved to an editorship with another Philadelphia monthly, Graham's Magazine, which in April 1841 printed "The Murders in the Rue Morgue".

He left one year later to make a meager living off freelance stories, poems, and reviews. On January 29, 1845, the New York Evening Mirror printed The Raven, which created a sensation. Poe at last gained fame, but he remained impoverished.
That year, he also became editor of a New York Monthly, The Broadway Journal, which he eventually bought on credit. In a failed attempt to raise circulation, he wrote a series of 5 articles on "plagiarisms" on Longfellow's work, which stirred up great controversy. By late 1846, financial woes and Poe's own continuing decline ended the magazine.

In January 1847, his wife died in their cottage at Fordham. This wracked a Poe already assaulted by his poverty and instability. He continued to write, and engaged in unsuccessful publishing schemes and romances, until, on October 3, 1849, Joseph W. Walker found him unconscious in the street. Poe remained hospitalized–oscillating between a somatic state and violent delirium–until his death at 5 am on the 7th.

Though Poe had earned a local reputation as a writer of grotesque horror stories, he had little reputation among the literati. His fierce reviews had earned him the ill will of many writers, and his arguments in favor of aestheticism over didacticism in literature went against the currents of the time. Indeed, sometimes the gothic terror he created failed to surpass the popular romantic fiction of the time–but then, he needed to earn money from his work. Even so, he has influenced writers ranging from Robert Louis Stevenson and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to T.S. Eliot and William Faulkner. He also enjoys renown in France, where–in comparison to America–he enjoyed a greater reputation in his life thanks to Baudelaire's translations.

Poe's literature hardly relates to the harsh realities of 19th century life. The dark, chaotic, romantic worlds he created represent an escape from the real, unromantic miseries of life to a place where miseries become grand, beautiful things.
His 1839 poem, "Lenore", demonstrates this, as he romanticizes a woman in her death. Rhyme and diction serve to formalize the tone into that of a romantic elegy, while the prose level meaning of the poem romanticizes death.

Poe uses couplet rhymes throughout the poem, with the exception of lines 5-7, where all three share an end-rhyme. He also includes several interior rhymes as in "The sweet Lenore hath gone before, with Hope that flew beside" (15) and "The life still there upon her hair, the death upon her eyes" (19). Such excessive rhyme typically makes a poem sing-song, but in a poem about death, it makes the theme stand out sharper in contrast.The couplet rhymes also formalize the tone into that of a romantic elegy.

Poe's diction similarly formalizes the tone. In line 3, he addresses a "Guy de Vere". Because this name sounds aristocratic, it raises poem to romanticism, as it follows the convention of relating tales of the upper class. Suggesting "true", it resembles the names of heroes in the then-popular romantic fiction, and thus creates a subtext of passion. In line 10, Poe refers to the burial service as "ritual". This underlines the ritualistic tone created by the rhymes and other diction. The Latin "Peccavimus" (13), and archaic "Avaunt!" (20), meanwhile, formalize the tone.

The prose meaning of the poem implicitly makes the dead woman, Lenore, the heroine of a romantic tale. "And Guy De Vere, hast thou no tear?–weep now or never more!" (3), suggests some sort of soured love affair–which fits well with the implications of the name, for stories of the time typically involved romance with a male noble.

Betrayal also fits the genre's conventions. One might simply blame this on de Vere, assuming that Poe continues to address him in lines 11-12 "By you–by yours, the evil eye–by yours the slanderous tongue / That did to death the innocence that died and died so young?". However, line ten refers to the singing of a requiem, which would require multiple voices. Also, line 20–"Avaunt!–avaunt! to friends from fiends the indigent ghost is riven"–refers to her earthly tormentors in the plural. This suggests that while de Vere committed a final act of betrayal, but only because others spurred him to it. Because of this evil, death becomes desirable.

Thus, in "Lenore", Poe romanticizes death. The poem, in fact, becomes the "Paean [joyous song] of old days" with which he promises to "waft the angel on her flight" (26). Likewise, Poe's works represent a romanticization of darkness, an elevation of the misery and deprivation he suffered–as a child from lack of fatherly attention, as an adult from poverty and lack of recognition. Many critics see Poe's works as attempts to discover the boundaries of the human mind, or the output of a romantic's never-outgrown solitary youth–destroying the outer world for the inner. Poe's circumstances of life, however, killed his ability to function in the world; woe eroded him, though a less sensitive soul might not have felt it as intensely. The world Poe wrote of reflected the misery, but turned it into something desirable, creating a mental refuge, which and a lens through he could reinterpret his misery.