Edgar Allan Poe was born January 19, 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts. He was the second child of actress Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe and actor David Poe, Jr. He had an elder brother named William Henry Leonard Poe, and a younger sister named Rosalie Poe (Bloom). There is a myth that Edgar was named after a character in William Shakespeare's King Lear, a play that his parents were a part of in 1809 (Bloom). Though his parents were actors Poe never had a stable relationship with them. His father abandoned their family in 1810, and his mother died a year later from consumption ‘pulmonary tuberculosis’. Edgar was only three when this occurred (Bloom). “Poe was then taken into the home of John and Frances Allan, who were successful Scottish merchants …show more content…
Poe wanted to go to a military academy which was located in West Point he received his spot there in 1830. Just right before he got accepted, Poe published his second book collection called Al Aaraaf, Tamberlane, and minor poems in 1829. Poe stood out most in his academic studies at West Point, he was later kicked out after a year because of not keeping up with his duties. Shortly after leaving the academy Poe decided to do his writing full time. He moved around often looking for job opportunities living in New York City, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Richmond. While living in Baltimore with his aunt Maria Clemm and her daughter Virginia. His younger cousin Virginia became his inspiration of what to write about as well as who he fell in love with. Poe and Virginia got married in 1836 when she was only the age of 13-14. “A year before tying the knot he returned to Richmond to work for a magazine company called the Southern Literary Messenger” (Bloom). Here he began to start his reputation as a “cut-throat critic”, one who would write nasty reviews of his fellow writers. “In this magazine Poe published some of his own work, including two parts of his only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym” (Kennedy). Poe’s nasty reviews caused conflict between him and the company so he left the magazine in 1837. Poe became a literary sensation in 1845 with the