# data[].attributes.body
Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe was Poe's 13 year old cousin and wife. They married in 1836 on May 16.

# data[].attributes.body
Only seven people attended Poe's funeral.

# data[].attributes.body
The Raven was his most popular poem.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The breadth of Edgar Allan Poe's influence on our culture is incalculable. He invented the detective story, contributed to the development of both science fiction and the horror genre, and wrote about the only American poem anybody knows-certainly the only one popular enough to have an NFL team named after it. His aesthetic and themes have influenced such cultural figures as Salvador Dali, Charles Baudelaire, and Alfred Hitchcock, who credited Poe's works with inspiring him to make suspense films. A century and a half after his death, Poe still makes appearances on television shows like The Following and South Park as well as the upcoming movies The Tell-Tale Heart starring Rose McGowan and Stonehearst Asylum with Kate Beckinsale and Michael Caine. In addition to numerous Poe societies (including ones in Denmark and the Czech Republic), there are museums devoted to him in Richmond, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and the Bronx. Opened in 1922, the Poe Museum in Richmond boasts the world's largest collection of Poe's personal items and memorabilia.

Poe was born in Boston in 1809 but grew up in Richmond, Virginia and attended the University of Virginia. His early years were plagued by the death of his mother when he was two, his first love when he was 15, and his foster mother when he was 20. After dropping out of college and getting expelled from West Point, Poe took a job as an editor at the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond. His controversial fiction and scathing book reviews boosted the magazine's circulation seven times in seventeen months, and he only got fired twice in the process. After his second termination, Poe took a series of editorial positions at the leading magazines in Philadelphia and New York and supplemented his income with lectures and public readings. His short story "The Gold Bug" was a smash hit, but the publication of "The Raven" made him internationally famous (while only earning him about $15).
READ 13 TRUE STORIES BEHIND EDGAR ALLAN POE'S TERROR TALES
After the death of his wife from tuberculosis at the age of 24 (coincidently the same age at which his mother and brother also died), Poe devoted his remaining years to developing and publishing an early version of the "Big Bang" theory entitled Eureka. During a lecture tour of the East Coast, Poe engaged himself to a former childhood sweetheart (by then a wealthy widow) Elmira Royster Shelton back in Richmond, but he died while passing through Baltimore on October 7, 1849-just ten days before the wedding. The cause of his death remains a mystery, but here are 13 haunting facts we do know about it.

1. When he died, Poe was on his way to Philadelphia for an editing job.

One of the last letters Poe wrote is a note to the poet Mrs. St. Leon Loud in which Poe arranges to meet her in Philadelphia to edit a book of her poetry. The letter is now in the collection of the Poe Museum.

2. A week before his death, his doctor advised him not to travel.

The night before he left Richmond on his trip to Philadelphia, his fiancée Elmira Shelton commented that he appeared ill, so Poe visited a doctor friend named John Carter, who advised Poe to stay in Richmond a few more days before making the journey. When Poe left Carter's house, he took Carter's sword cane, accidentally leaving his own.

3. Poe could not remember the location of his luggage.

Poe's attending physician, John Moran, asked his patient where he had left his luggage, but Poe could not remember. A few weeks later his cousin found a trunk of his possessions in Baltimore, and another trunk was found in Richmond. While his manuscripts went to his literary executor and editor Rufus Griswold, Poe's sister and mother-in-law fought over his trunk.

4. Four days before his death Poe was found at a polling place on a voting day.

Poe was found at Ryan's Fourth Ward Polls on the day of a municipal election. This location was associated with cooping, a form of voter fraud in which unsuspecting victims were drugged and forced to vote at one polling place after another until being left for dead. A few years after Poe's death a rumor spread that Poe had been cooped. About a decade after Poe's death, his friend John Ruben Thompson wrote a lecture, the manuscript of which (you guessed it) is in the Poe Museum, reporting that being cooped had contributed to Poe's death.

5. Poe's cat could not live without him.

After hearing of Poe's death, his mother-in-law discovered that his beloved tortoiseshell cat Catterina had also just died.

6. His enemy wrote his obituary.

One of Poe's professional and personal rivals Rufus Wilmot Griswold wrote a lengthy obituary for his enemy that was so libelous Griswold signed it with a pseudonym. The article portrayed Poe as a mad, drunken, womanizing opium addict who based his darkest tales on personal experience. Griswold expanded this account into a brief memoir of the author, and Griswold's distorted picture of Poe influenced popular opinion of the author for over a century.

7. His attending physician dismissed reports that Poe had been drinking heavily before his death.

In response to reports that Poe died as a result of a drinking binge, Poe's attending physician John Moran wrote articles and even a book, Edgar Allan Poe: A Defense, both to refute these rumors and to provide his own "first-hand" account of Poe's final days. Regrettably, Moran's accounts vary so widely that they are not generally considered reliable.

8. His friend spread rumors that he had been drunk.

When Poe was found in distress at Ryan's Fourth Ward Polls, he called for his magazine editor acquaintance Joseph Snodgrass. After failing to convince one of Poe's relatives to care for the poet, Snodgrass sent him to Washington College Hospital. A staunch temperance advocate, Snodgrass wrote and lectured about Poe's death as a cautionary tale about the evils of alcohol.

9. Poe's hair was a collector's item.

While Poe was lying in state, several of his admirers waited in line for souvenirs of the poet. His attending physician John Moran wrote that Poe's body was "visited by some of the first individuals of the city, many of them anxious to have a lock of his hair." Poe's friend Joseph Snodgrass saved a clipping which is now owned by the Poe Museum.

10. Only seven people attended Poe's funeral.

Poe's cousins hastily buried him the day after he died. An observer recalled the ceremony as being both "cold-blooded" and "unchristianlike." One of the attendees, Henry Herring, was later quoted as saying about Poe, "I didn't have anything to do with him when he was alive, and I don't want to have anything to do with him after his death."

11. Poe's body was moved decades after his death.

Poe was buried in an unmarked grave in his grandfather's plot in Westminster Burying Grounds in Baltimore. Eleven years later, a cousin paid for a monument, but the stone was destroyed by a train that crashed into the stone carver's shop. It was 26 years after Poe's death that teachers and students raised the money for a proper monument which was placed in a place of honor next to the cemetery gate. While it was being moved to the new location, Poe's coffin broke, revealing what was left of Poe's remains. Pieces of the coffin are now collector's items. Supposedly, one of Poe's female admirers wore a cross fashioned from pieces of the wood.

12. Poe's wife was buried next to him nearly 40 years after her death.

Poe's wife died two years before he did, and she was buried in his landlord's family crypt in the Bronx. After he was reburied under his new monument, some of his admirers decided to move her next to him in Baltimore. The problem was that developers had already built over her cemetery and moved the bodies. Fortunately, one of Poe's eccentric biographers William Gill rescued her bones. Unfortunately, he took them home with him and kept them in a box under his bed for years before he sent them to Baltimore for reburial.

13. Poe's death did not stop him from writing.

In the 1860s, the medium Lizzie Doten published some poetry she claimed had been dictated to her by Poe's ghost. His fiancée Sarah Helen Whitman (after his first wife's death but before his engagement to Elmira Shelton) hired a medium to move in with her because she thought Poe's spirit was trying to communicate with her, too.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
13 Haunting Facts About Edgar Allan Poe's Death

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The breadth of Edgar Allan Poe's influence on our culture is incalculable. He invented the detective story, contributed to the development of both science fiction and the horror genre, and wrote about the only American poem anybody knows-certainly the only one popular enough to have an NFL team named after it.

# data[].attributes.body
Poe attended the famous military school, and he got kicked out after 8 months of attending the school from not following the rules.

# data[].attributes.body
Poe got the name Allan when his mother died in 1811 and Edgar was taken in by John and Frances Allan.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Stay up to date on news and events and support groups at UM Medical Center.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Edgar Allan Poe's Original Grave - Baltimore

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Westminster Hall and Burying Ground is home to the grave of American author Edgar Allan Poe, arguably its most famous resident. Poe actually has two graves on this site: his original grave and a monument added in 1875. His original burial spot, towards the back of Westminster Hall, is marked by a headstone with an engraved raven.

# data[].attributes.body
He wrote in such a dark way because he suffered from so many family losses and he explained the way he felt through his poem's.

# data[].attributes.body
1. Alcohol Dehydrogenase
2. Delerium Tremens
3. Rabies
4. Murder
5. Carbon Monoxide Poisoning
6. Epilepsy
7. Dipsomania
8. Hypoglycemia
9. Porphryia

# data[].attributes.body
At least 81 films have been based on works by Edgar Allen Poe — and many of them are about the same stories. There have been ten versions of "The Tell-Tale Heart", and nine of "The Pit and the Pendulum," "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," and "The Black Cat."

# data[].attributes.body
Edgar Allan Poe published about 69 poems throughout his whole life.

# data[].attributes.body
The heavy metal band Iron Maiden have a song called “Murders in the Rue Morgue” which is where Poe got the title of his one of his best known stories.

# data[].attributes.body
Known as Poe's first biographer. He wrote an anonymous letter for Poe's obituary stating that he was an crazy , creepy man that was addicted to alcohol.

# data[].attributes.body
The “Poe Toaster” is a man who puts a half-full bottle of cognac and three roses on top of Poe’s grave and disappears into the darkness. Nobody know who it is.

# data[].attributes.body
Poe married Virginia Clemm, his 13 year old cousin, and she later died in 1847 from Tuberculosis.

# data[].attributes.body
Poe’s mother died in 1811 while on a theatrical tour, and Poe’s dad’s death and whereabouts when he died are unknown.

# data[].attributes.body
David and Elizabeth Poe

# data[].attributes.body
Edgar Allan Poe was born in 1809 in Boston. Edgar Allan Poe died on October 7, 1849, and is buried in the Westminster Church Yard.

# data[].attributes.body
This poem made Edgar Allan Poe famous after he published.

# data[].attributes.body
Parents died by the time he was three years old. He was separated from his family and adopted by Mr. and Mrs. John Allan. His father was a wealthy merchant, so Poe went to good schools.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Find new book releases, best sellers lists and see when your favorite author is making their next appearance.Simon & Schuster is your one stop online book store for book and author news.

# data[].attributes.body
“Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.”

# data[].attributes.body
Here's a biography that briefly explains Poe's life.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
by Robert Giordano, 27 June 2005

This is a short biography. Unlike many biographies that just seem to go on and on, I've tried to compose one short enough to read in a single sitting.

Poe's Childhood

Edgar Poe was born in Boston on January 19, 1809. That makes him Capricorn, on the cusp of Aquarius. His parents were David and Elizabeth Poe. David was born in Baltimore on July 18, 1784. Elizabeth Arnold came to the U.S. from England in 1796 and married David Poe after her first husband died in 1805. They had three children, Henry, Edgar, and Rosalie.

Elizabeth Poe died in 1811, when Edgar was 2 years old. She had separated from her husband and had taken her three kids with her. Henry went to live with his grandparents while Edgar was adopted by Mr. and Mrs. John Allan and Rosalie was taken in by another family. John Allan was a successful merchant, so Edgar grew up in good surroundings and went to good schools.

When Poe was 6, he went to school in England for 5 years. He learned Latin and French, as well as math and history. He later returned to school in America and continued his studies. Edgar Allan went to the University of Virginia in 1826. He was 17. Even though John Allan had plenty of money, he only gave Edgar about a third of what he needed. Although Edgar had done well in Latin and French, he started to drink heavily and quickly became in debt. He had to quit school less than a year later.

Poe in the Army

Edgar Allan had no money, no job skills, and had been shunned by John Allan. Edgar went to Boston and joined the U.S. Army in 1827. He was 18. He did reasonably well in the Army and attained the rank of sergeant major. In 1829, Mrs. Allan died and John Allan tried to be friendly towards Edgar and signed Edgar's application to West Point.

While waiting to enter West Point, Edgar lived with his grandmother and his aunt, Mrs. Clemm. Also living there was his brother, Henry, and young cousin, Virginia. In 1830, Edgar Allan entered West Point as a cadet. He didn't stay long because John Allan refused to send him any money. It is thought that Edgar purposely broke the rules and ignored his duties so he would be dismissed.

A Struggling Writer

In 1831, Edgar Allan Poe went to New York City where he had some of his poetry published. He submitted stories to a number of magazines and they were all rejected. Poe had no friends, no job, and was in financial trouble. He sent a letter to John Allan begging for help but none came. John Allan died in 1834 and did not mention Edgar in his will.

In 1835, Edgar finally got a job as an editor of a newspaper because of a contest he won with his story, " The Manuscript Found in a Bottle". Edgar missed Mrs. Clemm and Virginia and brought them to Richmond to live with him. In 1836, Edgar married his cousin, Virginia. He was 27 and she was 13. Many sources say Virginia was 14, but this is incorrect. Virginia Clemm was born on August 22, 1822. They were married before her 14th birthday, in May of 1836. In case you didn't figure it out already, Virginia was Virgo.

As the editor for the Southern Literary Messenger, Poe successfully managed the paper and increased its circulation from 500 to 3500 copies. Despite this, Poe left the paper in early 1836, complaining of the poor salary. In 1837, Edgar went to New York. He wrote "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym" but he could not find any financial success. He moved to Philadelphia in 1838 where he wrote " Ligeia" and " The Haunted Palace". His first volume of short stories, "Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque" was published in 1839. Poe received the copyright and 20 copies of the book, but no money.

Sometime in 1840, Edgar Poe joined George R. Graham as an editor for Graham's Magazine. During the two years that Poe worked for Graham's, he published his first detective story, " The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and challenged readers to send in cryptograms, which he always solved. During the time Poe was editor, the circulation of the magazine rose from 5000 to 35,000 copies. Poe left Graham's in 1842 because he wanted to start his own magazine.

Poe found himself without a regular job once again. He tried to start a magazine called The Stylus and failed. In 1843, he published some booklets containing a few of his short stories but they didn't sell well enough. He won a hundred dollars for his story, " The Gold Bug" and sold a few other stories to magazines but he barely had enough money to support his family. Often, Mrs. Clemm had to contribute financially. In 1844, Poe moved back to New York. Even though " The Gold Bug" had a circulation of around 300,000 copies, he could barely make a living.

In 1845, Edgar Poe became an editor at The Broadway Journal. A year later, the Journal ran out of money and Poe was out of a job again. He and his family moved to a small cottage near what is now East 192nd Street. Virginia's health was fading away and Edgar was deeply distressed by it. Virginia died in 1847, 10 days after Edgar's birthday. After losing his wife, Poe collapsed from stress but gradually returned to health later that year.

Final Days

In June of 1849, Poe left New York and went to Philadelphia, where he visited his friend John Sartain. Poe left Philadelphia in July and came to Richmond. He stayed at the Swan Tavern Hotel but joined "The Sons of Temperance" in an effort to stop drinking. He renewed a boyhood romance with Sarah Royster Shelton and planned to marry her in October.

On September 27, Poe left Richmond for New York. He went to Philadelphia and stayed with a friend named James P. Moss. On September 30, he meant to go to New York but supposedly took the wrong train to Baltimore. On October 3, Poe was found at Gunner's Hall, a public house at 44 East Lombard Street, and was taken to the hospital. He lapsed in and out of consciousness but was never able to explain exactly what happened to him. Edgar Allan Poe died in the hospital on Sunday, October 7, 1849.

The mystery surrounding Poe's death has led to many myths and urban legends. The reality is that no one knows for sure what happened during the last few days of his life. Did Poe die from alcoholism? Was he mugged? Did he have rabies? A more detailed exploration of Poe's death can be found here.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A short biography of Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
by Robert Giordano, 27 June 2005 This is a short biography. Unlike many biographies that just seem to go on and on, I've tried to compose one short enough to read in a single sitting. Edgar Poe was born in Boston on January 19, 1809. That makes him Capricorn, on the cusp of Aquarius.