You might not think Edgar Allan Poe is a very relevant author to talk about in a blog today. I mean, after all, he has been dead for over 150 years. However, two historical novels just came out with – you guess it – Edgar Allan Poe as the subject. The Pale Blue Eyes by Louis Bayard explores Poe’s days at West Point. For those that did not know, Poe attended West Point until his stepfather quit funding his studies and Poe himself disobeyed orders. The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl examines the mysteries surrounding Poe’s death in 1849.
I learned about Poe at an early age. My fifth grade teacher decided to read Tell-Tale Heart to us one day. What possessed her to read as story about a man killing another man, dismembering him, and burying him under the floor to children, I will never know, but it definitely left an impression on me. It probably also caused many nightmares thereafter. But, I was intrigued.
If you study Poe’s life, you can see how he got place where he could write such ghoulish tales. It seemed money was always lacking in Poe’s life, but poverty was not his only constant companion. Death was always around him. His beloved mother died when he was only three years old. Legend has it that Poe’s father died only days later. Edgar’s mother was well known as an actress and Frances and John Allan, prominent citizens of Richmond, decided to take Edgar into their home. Although never legally adopted, he was baptized as Edgar Allan Poe. Edgar was fond of Fannie, but had a love/hate relationship with John. Sent to West Point, Edgar received sporadic financial support from John and turned to gambling. Unfortunately, he was not a good gambler and ran up gambling debts.
Poe was disheartened when he lost his stepmother, but the most crushing death of all, perhaps the one that drove him over the edge into madness, was that of his young wife. After Edgar moved in with his widowed Aunt Maria Clemm in Baltimore, he fell in love with her daughter (his first cousin) Virginia. He wrote and worked as an editor to try to earn money for the family, but there was never enough. He married Virginia in 1836 when she was only 13 years old. She died in 1847 of tuberculosis after five years of illness and Poe, always a bit unstable, spiraled out of control. He was drinking more than ever and behaving erratically. In 1849, Poe was found in the streets of Baltimore, delirious. He was taken to the hospital where he died four days later. He never regained consciousness enough to let anyone know why he was in Baltimore or what happened to him. No one really knows what he died of although people have speculated it was alcoholism, mercury poisoning, diabetes, syphilis, drugs, even that he died of a broken heart.
In between all the sorrows he suffered, he gave us great literary works that have sustained through the years. What is Halloween with a reading of The Raven, which Poe sold for a mere $35? What is scarier than The Masque of the Red Death where the watchful Prince thinks his party is safe, only to have tuberculosis invade and kill everyone? Only the Father of the Modern Mystery would leave us with the greatest mystery of all – his death.
You can find Poe books, audio readings, and movies at Amazon.com.
My favorite Poe poem is Annabel Lee (about his wife Virginia). Do you have a favorite Poe piece?