Poe's Life

Who is Edgar Allan Poe?

The name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and
madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who
return from the dead. His works have been in print since
1827 and include such literary classics as The Tell-Tale
Heart, The Raven, and The Fall of the House of Usher.
This versatile writers oeuvre includes short stories, poetry, a
novel, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, and hundreds
of essays and book reviews. He is widely acknowledged as
the inventor of the modern detective story and an innovator
in the science fiction genre, but he made his living as
Americas first great literary critic and theoretician. Poes
reputation today rests primarily on his tales of terror as well
as on his haunting lyric poetry.
Just as the bizarre characters in Poes stories have captured the public imagination
so too has Poe himself. He is seen as a morbid, mysterious figure lurking in the
shadows of moonlit cemeteries or crumbling castles. This is the Poe of legend. But
much of what we know about Poe is wrong, the product of a biography written by
one of his enemies in an attempt to defame the authors name.
The real Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809. Edgar was
the second of three children. His other brother William Henry Leonard Poe would
also become a poet before his early death, and Poes sister Rosalie Poe would grow
up to teach penmanship at a Richmond girls school. Within three years of Poes
birth both of his parents had died, and he was taken in by the wealthy tobacco
merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia while
Poes siblings went to live with other families. Mr. Allan would rear Poe to be a
businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe had dreams of being a writer in
emulation of his childhood hero the British poet Lord Byron. Early poetic verses
found written in a young Poes handwriting on the backs of Allans ledger sheets
reveal how little interest Poe had in the tobacco business. By the age of thirteen,
Poe had compiled enough poetry to publish a book, but his headmaster advised
Allan against allowing this.
In 1826 Poe left Richmond to attend the University of Virginia, where he excelled in
his classes while accumulating considerable debt. The miserly Allan had sent Poe to
college with less than a third of the money he needed, and Poe soon took up
gambling to raise money to pay his expenses. By the end of his first term Poe was
so desperately poor that he burned his furniture to keep warm.
Humiliated by his poverty and furious with Allan for not providing enough funds in
the first place, Poe returned to Richmond and visited the home of his fiance Elmira
Royster, only to discover that she had become engaged to another man in Poes
absence. The heartbroken Poes last few months in the Allan mansion were
punctuated with increasing hostility towards Allan until Poe finally stormed out of

the home in a quixotic quest to become a great poet and to find adventure. He
accomplished the first objective by publishing his first book Tamerlane when he was
only eighteen, and to achieve the second goal he enlisted in the United States Army.
Two years later he heard that Frances Allan, the only mother he had ever known,
was dying of tuberculosis and wanted to see him before she died. By the time Poe
returned to Richmond she had already been buried. Poe and Allan briefly reconciled,
and Allan helped Poe gain an appointment to the United States Military Academy at
West Point.
Before going to West Point, Poe published another volume of poetry. While there,
Poe was offended to hear that Allan had remarried without telling him or even
inviting him to the ceremony. Poe wrote to Allan detailing all the wrongs Allan had
committed against him and threatened to get himself expelled from the academy.
After only eight months at West Point Poe was thrown out, but he soon published yet
another book.
Broke and alone, Poe turned to Baltimore, his late fathers home, and called upon
relatives in the city. One of Poes cousins robbed him in the night, but another
relative, Poes aunt Maria Clemm, became a new mother to him and welcomed him
into her home. Clemms daughter Virginia first acted as a courier to carry letters to
Poes lady loves but soon became the object of his desire.
While Poe was in Baltimore, Allan died, leaving Poe out of his will, which did,
however, provide for an illegitimate child Allan had never seen. By then Poe was
living in poverty but had started publishing his short stories, one of which won a
contest sponsored by the Saturday Visiter. The connections Poe established through
the contest allowed him to publish more stories and to eventually gain an editorial
position at the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond. It was at this magazine
that Poe finally found his lifes work as a magazine writer.
Within a year Poe helped make the Messenger the most popular
magazine in the south with his sensational stories as well as with
his scathing book reviews. Poe soon developed a reputation as a
fearless critic who not only attacked an authors work but also
insulted the author and the northern literary establishment. Poe
targeted some of the most famous writers in the country. One of
his victims was the anthologist and editor Rufus Griswold.
At the age of twenty-seven, Poe brought Maria and Virginia
Clemm to Richmond and married his Virginia, who was not yet
fourteen. The marriage proved a happy one, and the family is said to have enjoyed
singing together at night. Virginia expressed her devotion to her husband in a
Valentine poem now in the collection of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, and Poe
celebrated the joys of married life in his poem Eulalie.
Dissatisfied with his low pay and lack of editorial control at theMessenger, Poe
moved to New York City. In the wake of the financial crisis known as the Panic of
1837, Poe struggled to find magazine work and wrote his only novel, The Narrative
of Arthur Gordon Pym.

After a year in New York, Poe moved to Philadelphia in 1838 and wrote for a number
of
different
magazines.
He
served
as
editor
of Burtons and
then Grahams magazines while continuing to sell articles to Alexanders Weekly
Messenger and other journals. In spite of his growing fame, Poe was still barely able
to make a living. For the publication of his first book of short stories, Tales of the
Grotesque and Arabesque, he was only paid with twenty-five free copies of his book.
He would soon become a champion for the cause of higher wages for writers as well
as for an international copyright law. To change the face of the magazine industry,
he proposed starting his own journal, but he failed to find the necessary funding.
In the face of poverty Poe was still able to find solace at home with his wife and
mother-in-law, but tragedy struck in 1842 when Poes wife contracted tuberculosis,
the disease that had already claimed Poes mother, brother, and foster mother.
Always in search of better opportunities, Poe moved to New York again in 1844 and
introduced himself to the city by perpetrating a hoax. His news story of a balloon
trip across the ocean caused a sensation, and the public rushed to read everything
about ituntil Poe revealed that he had fooled them all.
The January 1845 publication of The Raven made Poe a
household name. He was now famous enough to draw large
crowds to his lectures, and he was beginning to demand
better pay for his work. He published two books that year,
and briefly lived his dream of running his own magazine
when he bought out the owners of theBroadway Journal. The
failure of the venture, his wifes deteriorating health, and
rumors spreading about Poes relationship with a married
woman, drove him out of the city in 1846. At this time he
moved to a tiny cottage in the country. It was there, in the
winter of 1847 that Virginia died at the age of twenty-four.
Poe was devastated, and was unable to write for months. His
critics assumed he would soon be dead. They were right. Poe only lived another two
years and spent much of that time traveling from one city to the next giving
lectures and finding backers for his latest proposed magazine project to be
called The Stylus.
While on lecture tour in Lowell, Massachusetts, Poe met and befriended Nancy
Richmond. His idealized and platonic love of her inspired some of his greatest
poetry, including For Annie. Since she remained married and unattainable, Poe
attempted to marry the poetess Sarah Helen Whitman in Providence, but the
engagement lasted only about one month. In Richmond he found his first fiance
Elmira Royster Shelton was now a widow, so began to court her again. Before he left
Richmond on a trip to Philadelphia he considered himself engaged to her, and her
letters from the time imply that she felt the same way. On the way to Philadelphia,
Poe stopped in Baltimore and disappeared for five days.
He was found in the bar room of a public house that was being used as a polling
place for an election. The magazine editor Joseph Snodgrass sent Poe to Washington
College Hospital, where Poe spent the last days of his life far from home and

surrounded by strangers. Neither Poes mother-in-law nor his fiance knew what had
become of him until they read about it in the newspapers. Poe died on October 7,
1849 at the age of forty. The exact cause of Poes death remains a mystery.
Days after Poes death, his literary rival Rufus Griswold wrote a
libelous obituary of the author in a misguided attempt at
revenge for some of the offensive things Poe had said and
written about him. Griswold followed the obituary with a
memoir in which he portrayed Poe as a drunken, womanizing
madman with no morals and no friends. Griswolds attacks
were meant to cause the public to dismiss Poe and his works,
but the biography had exactly the opposite effect and instead
drove the sales of Poes books higher than they had ever been
during the authors lifetime. Griswolds distorted image of Poe created the Poe
legend that lives to this day while Griswold is only remembered (if at all) as Poes
first biographer.

Poe's Technique

Poes Use of Literary Devices in a Short Story

(English SOL 7.4b, 7.5a,b, and c)
Even critics who object to Poes subject matter tend to concede that Poe was a master craftsman. The theories he
explained as a literary critic are put into practice in his short stories and poems. Poes primary concern was unity of
effect, which means that every element of a story should help create a single emotional impact. Poes 1846 tale
The Cask of Amontillado is one of his best known works. It is the story of a revenge-obsessed man Montressor who
tricks his enemy Fortunato into following him into a catacomb in search of a pipe of Amontillado (a kind of sherry).
Over the course of their journey, Montressor gradually reveals his plan to his victim, who is too drunk to notice.
Finally, the murderer chains his victim to a wall and bricks him up alive in a compartment. In the following excerpt
from the opening paragraphs of The Cask of Amontillado, Poe quickly and effectively foreshadows the gruesome
conclusion of the story with a minimum of unnecessary detail. Notice the ironic details probably intended for
humorous effect. For example, even the victims name, Fortunato, is ironic because he is, in fact, very unfortunate.
At the time Poe wrote this story he was engaged in a literary feud with writer Thomas Dunn English, who Poe would
eventually sue for libel.

From The Cask of Amontillado

The thousand injuries 1 of Fortunato I had borne as I best

1. Hyperbole: the thousand injuries *

Poe does not tell us exactly what
You, who so well know the nature of my soul, will not suppose, Fortunato has done to deserve
however, that gave utterance to a threat.3 At length I would Montressors wrath, but Poe deliberately
exaggerates the number and severity of
be avenged; this was a point definitely, settled --but the very
Fortunatos offenses only say that those
definitiveness with which it was resolved precluded the idea of offenses pale in comparison to the way in
risk. I must not only punish but punish with impunity. A wrong which Fortunato has most recently
insulted Montressor.
is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is
2. Conflict: The narrator Montressor has
equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself
been offended by Fortunato and must

could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge.2

have his revenge. Montressor does not

want to be caught or punished for what he
It must be understood that neither by word nor deed had I
will do, so he must conceive of a plan that
given Fortunato cause to doubt my good will. I continued, as will allow him to punish with impunity.
was my wont to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that The first paragraph establishes the
conflict.
my to smile now was at the thought of his immolation.
3. Point of View: The story is told from
He had a weak point --this Fortunato --although in other
first-person point of view by a narrator
regards he was a man to be respected and even feared. He
who directly addresses a listener. Some
prided himself on his connoisseurship in wine.4 Few Italians
critics believe the narrator is on his
deathbed confessing to a priest.
have the true virtuoso spirit. For the most part their
4. Foreshadowing: Poe reveals that
enthusiasm is adopted to suit the time and opportunity, to
Fortunato has a weakness for wine, and
practice imposture upon the British and Austrian millionaires. this will play a major part in Montressors
In painting and gemmary, Fortunato, like his countrymen, was plan.
a quack, but in the matter of old wines he was sincere. In this 5. Irony: This term describes a
contradiction between the appearance of
respect I did not differ from him materially; --I was skilful in the
something and its reality. In this case,
Italian vintages myself, and bought largely whenever I could. Fortunato thinks Montressor is trying to
It was about dusk, one evening during the supreme madness talk him out of trying the Amontillado, but
the reader knows this is exactly what
of the carnival season5, that I encountered my friend. He
Montressor wants him to do.
accosted me with excessive warmth, for he had been drinking
6. Setting: The story begins in a carnival.
much. The man wore motley. He had on a tight-fitting partiMontressor may have waited until carnival
striped dress, and his head was surmounted by the conical cap time to have an excuse to wear a mask in
and bells. I was so pleased to see him that I thought I should public so that no one would recognize him
as he walked with his victim. He might
never have done wringing his hand.
have also waited until then to insure that
I said to him --"My dear Fortunato, you are luckily met. How
his servants would all leave the house to
remarkably well you are looking to-day. But I have received a attend the festivities so that he would
pipe of what passes for Amontillado, and I have my doubts." have a private setting for his crime. Poe
has set the story in an Italian city, mostly
"How?" said he. "Amontillado, A pipe? Impossible! And in
likely Venice, where such carnivals where
the middle of the carnival!"
common. He also chose a European locale
"I have my doubts," I replied; "and I was silly enough to because he needed a culture, unlike
America, in which catacombs were
pay the full Amontillado price without consulting you in the
common.
matter. You were not to be found, and I was fearful of losing a
7. Setting: Instead of going to a wine
bargain."
cellar, the murder takes his victim to a
"Amontillado!"
catacomb. Notice how Poe describes not
only the appearance but the smell and the
"I have my doubts."
texture of the catacombs.
"Amontillado!"
8. Metaphor: two filmy orbs Poe uses
"And I must satisfy them."
this image to describe Fortunatos eyes in
"Amontillado!"
such as way that tells the reader how
drunk Fortunato already is.
"As you are engaged, I am on my way to Luchresi. If
9. Irony: Your health is precious. The
any one has a critical turn it is he. He will tell me --"
murderer pretends to show concern for his
"Luchresi cannot tell Amontillado from Sherry."
victims health. The reader of the story
"And yet some fools will have it that his taste is a
knows this, but the victim does not.

felt as such to him who has done the wrong.

match for your own. "Come, let us go."

"Whither?"
"To your vaults."

"My friend, no; I will not impose upon your good

nature. I perceive you have an engagement. Luchresi--"
"I have no engagement; --come."
"My friend, no. It is not the engagement, but the
severe cold with which I perceive you are afflicted. The vaults
are insufferably damp. They are encrusted with nitre." 5
"Let us go, nevertheless. The cold is merely nothing.
Amontillado! You have been imposed upon. And as for
Luchresi, he cannot distinguish Sherry from Amontillado." Thus
speaking, Fortunato possessed himself of my arm; and putting
on a mask of black silk and drawing a roquelaire closely about
my person 6, I suffered him to hurry me to my palazzo.
There were no attendants at home; they had
absconded to make merry in honour of the time. I had told
them that I should not return until the morning, and had given
them explicit orders not to stir from the house. These orders
were sufficient, I well knew, to insure their immediate
disappearance, one and all, as soon as my back was turned.
I took from their sconces two flambeaux, and giving
one to Fortunato, bowed him through several suites of rooms
to the archway that led into the vaults. I passed down a long
and winding staircase, requesting him to be cautious as he
followed. We came at length to the foot of the descent, and
stood together upon the damp ground of the catacombs of the
Montresors. 7
The gait of my friend was unsteady, and the bells upon
his cap jingled as he strode.
"The pipe," he said.
"It is farther on," said I; "but observe the white webwork which gleams from these cavern walls."
He turned towards me, and looked into my eyes with
two filmy orbs that distilled the rheum of intoxication. 8
"Nitre?" he asked, at length.
"Nitre," I replied. "How long have you had that cough?"
"Ugh! ugh! ugh! --ugh! ugh! ugh! --ugh! ugh! ugh!
--ugh! ugh! ugh! --ugh! ugh! ugh!" My poor friend found it
impossible to reply for many minutes. "It is nothing," he said,
at last.
"Come," I said, with decision, "we will go back; your health
is precious. 9

How Poe used poetic techniques to convey mood in his poetry:

(English SOL 7.5c and d)
In his essay The Philosophy of Composition Poe explained that he was attempting to create a melancholy mood
with his poem The Raven. He believed the long o sound in the word nevermore had a very sad sound, so he
repeated that sound at the end of each stanza. Poe also noted that the saddest subject in the world was the death of
a beautiful young woman, so he chose that as the subject of his poem. He then concluded that the narrator of the
poem should be the dead womans lover, the one, Poe believed, would be most deeply affected by her death.
Throughout the poem Poe uses imagery that conveys a sense of sorrow over the death of the narrators lover
Lenore. For example, he describes the dark night outside his room as a Plutonian shore, making an allusion to god
of the underworld Pluto. Poe also devotes a great deal of attention to the lyrical qualities of his poetry in order to
convey a sense of beauty, the contemplation of which, he believed, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.

From The Raven

1. Ryhme: ...dreary.weary.
2. Alliteration:
weary,1
...nodded, nearly napping
3. Onomatopoeia: tapping
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
4. Repetition: ...rapping, rapping
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a
5. Stanza: Once...more. *This selection
tapping, 3
includes four stanzas from the poem.
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber
Each stanza ends with a word that rhymes
with nevermore.
door. 4
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door- 6. Personifaction:
..sad uncertain rustling of each purple
Only this, and nothing more." 5
curtain *The rustling of the curtains
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
sounds sad as if the curtains themselves
share the misery of the narrator. Later in
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the
the poem a raven will be given human
floor.
attributes.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;- vainly I had sought to borrow
7. Assonance:
From my books surcease of sorrow- sorrow for the lost Lenore- ...terrors never felt before
8. Figurative Language: ...my soul
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name
grew stronger *It means he overcame
Lenorehis fear.
Nameless here for evermore.
Meter: octameter acatalectic, alternating
And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain 6 with heptameter catalectic repeated in
Thrilled me- filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; 7 the refrain of the fifth verse, and
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating, terminating with tetrameter catalectic (a
long syllable followed by a short one, the
"'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber doorfirst line consisting of sixteen syllables,
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;the second line of fifteen, the third of
sixteen, the fourth of fifteen, the fifth of
This it is, and nothing more."
sixteen, and the sixth of seven).

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, 8

"Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came
rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber
door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you"- here I opened wide the

door;Darkness there, and nothing more.