The Raven (Top Five Books) by Edgar Allan Poe

Author:Edgar Allan Poe [Poe, Edgar Allan]
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

During this time, Poe’s foster father, John Allan, had become extremely ill. Poe traveled to Richmond to call on Allan but was angrily turned away. In March he died, leaving Poe nothing. Even Allan’s illegitimate children received mentions in his will, but not the foster son in whom he saw such genius.

Through a wealthy Baltimorean named John P. Kennedy, Poe was introduced to Thomas W. White, who had begun publishing the Southern Literary Messenger out of Richmond in late 1834. Poe published his story “Berenice” in the March 1835 issue, followed by “Morella,” “Lionizing,” and “Hans Pfaall” in the next several editions. He also began to write book reviews, the severity of which were sometimes the cause of controversy. By August, Poe was employed as White’s assistant editor but within a few weeks was fired for his excessive drinking.

Returning to Baltimore, Poe hastily married his thirteen-year-old cousin Virginia in a private ceremony on September 22, 1835. He had been pursuing Eliza White, the eighteen-year-old daughter of his boss, Thomas White. It’s possible that Poe’s aunt engineered the betrothal to her daughter to “save” Poe from Eliza. Certainly, Poe had feelings for his fetching young cousin by this time—although the story is often told of how Poe used Virginia as a go-between to deliver messages to another young lady he was interested in only a couple of years earlier. But whatever the impetus, the twenty-seven-year-old Poe and thirteen-year-old Virginia were now husband and wife. Her age and their familial relations have spurred much speculation through the years on the true nature of their marital relationship. But there can be no doubt that Poe truly loved her, whether romantically or more as a sister-figure is impossible to say.

By December 1835, White welcomed Poe back to the Southern Literary Messenger, after Poe’s vow to abstain from alcohol. He would remain there through January 1837, reviewing the early work of Dickens and other authors but publishing no original fiction of his own. He did write “Maelzel’s Chess-Player” and two significant poems—“Bridal Ballad” and “To Zante”—during his tenure at the Messenger.

In the last issue Poe edited for the Messenger, he published the first installment of his only complete novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. The novel was published by Harpers in July 1938. Though it did not sell well in the U.S., it did better in England, where it was pirated, depriving Poe of any proceeds from its sales there. Poe did not think highly of his own work, later calling it “a very silly book.” The seafaring adventure, however, did apparently inspire a young Herman Melville, who wrote the considerably less silly Moby-Dick.

After leaving the Messenger, Poe and family moved to New York, where he managed to publish a couple of short stories while continuing to work on both The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym and his only dramatic piece, the unfinished tragedy Politian.

About the time that Pym was being published, the Poes moved once again, this time to Philadelphia in the summer of 1838.

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