Edgar Allan Poe: Mysterious and Spooky

by Keith A. Lehman

grave_Baltimore_MD Today, October 7th (1849), will be the anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe’s death – as mysterious as the stories he wrote.
As part of the Halloween tradition, Edgar Allan Poe is considered the American answer to the British Gothic genre of horror stories, specifically his short stories, which have come to be used on Halloween night for narrators to scare their audience – as well as the basis for horror films starring Vincent Price.

EdgarAllanPoe_1848_age39_one-year-before-death Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849 was an American poet, short story writer, playwright, editor, literary critic, essayist and one of the leaders of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and of the macabre, Poe was one of the early American practitioners of the short story and a progenitor of detective fiction and crime fiction. He is also credited with contributing to the emergent science fiction genre.
Born in Boston, Edgar Poe’s parents died when he was still young and he was taken in by John and Frances Allan of Richmond, Virginia. Raised there and for a few years in England, the Allans raised Poe in relative wealth, though he was never formally adopted. After a short period at the University of Virginia and a brief attempt at a military career, Poe and the Allans parted ways. Poe’s publishing career began humbly with an anonymous collection of poems called Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), credited only “by a Bostonian.” Poe moved to Baltimore to live with blood-relatives and switched his focus from poetry to prose. In July of 1835, he became assistant editor of the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond, where he helped increase subscriptions and began developing his own style of literary criticism. That year he also married Virginia Clemm, his 13-year-old cousin.
After an unsuccessful novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, Poe produced his first collection of short stories, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in 1839. That year Poe became editor of Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine and, later, Graham’s Magazine in Philadelphia. It was in Philadelphia that many of his most well-known works would be published. In that city, Poe also planned on starting his own journal, The Penn (later renamed The Stylus), though it would never come to be. In February 1844, he moved to New York City and worked with the Broadway Journal, a magazine of which he would eventually become sole owner.
In January 1845, Poe published “The Raven” to instant success but, only two years later, his wife Virginia died of tuberculosis on January 30, 1847. On October 7, 1849, Poe died at the age of 40 in Baltimore. The cause of death is undetermined and has been attributed to alcohol, drugs, cholera, rabies, suicide (although likely to be mistaken with his suicide attempt in the previous year), tuberculosis, heart disease, brain congestion and other agents.
Poe’s legacy includes a significant influence in literature in the United States and around the world as well as in specialized fields like cosmology and cryptography. Additionally, Poe and his works appear throughout popular culture in literature, music, films, television, video games, etc. Some of his homes are dedicated as museums today.

Read about Poe’s early life, military career, although short lived; his publishing career and other details at the Wikipedia entry.
Even though he was a drop out from the University of Virginia, today you can see a bust of him – a university that was founded by the great statesman of early America, and patriot of the American Revolutionary War and the third President of the United States – Thomas Jefferson.
Poe was destitute from gambling and when he dropped out of the University of Virginia, he enlisted in the United States Army and his regiment was located at Fort Moultrie, Charleston, South Carolina. He was soon promoted an officer with the title “artificer”, a non-commissioned officer who prepared shells for artillery, which doubled his monthly pay. He enlisted on May 26th, 1827 under an assumed name as Edgar A. Perry. Poe served for two years and attained the rank of Sergeant Major for Artillery, but he wanted to end his military career and so he revealed his real name and the circumstance of his enlistment to his commanding officer, Lieutenant Howard, who stated that Poe could only be discharged if he reconciled with John Allan, his foster father for whom he had a falling out with because of his gambling. Lieutenant Howard wrote a letter to Mr. Allan, but the step father refused to answer letters. Several months passed and Frances Allan, his step mother, died on February 28th, 1829 and Poe visited her after she was buried, not knowing she was ill or dying because Mr. Allan had refused to correspond to Edgar. However, John Allan agreed to support Poe’s attempt to be discharged from the army in order to receive an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point. Poe was discharged after a replacement to finish his enlistment term was found on April 15th, 1829. Edgar then moved in with his widowed aunt, Maria Clemm, where he became acquainted with his future wife, Virginia Eliza Clemm (Poe’s first cousin). Poe traveled to West Point and took his oath on July 1st, 1830. Quarrels began with John Allan when he remarried and ended with Mr. Allan disowning Poe for good. Poe left West Point after purposely getting court-martial. On February 8th, 1831, he was tried for gross neglect of duty and disobedience of orders for refusing to attend formations, classes, or church.
As far as Edgar Allan Poe’s death and its controversy, it was caused by an obituary that appeared in the New York Tribune that was signed by a Ludwig, and the article was published all over the country. Later “Ludwig” was identified as Rufus Wilmot Griswold, an editor and anthologist, who had a grudge with Edgar since 1842. Yet, Griswold was the executor of Poe’s literary state, which helped him destroy Poe’s reputation after he had died. Griswold wrote a biographical “Memoir” of Poe, which he included in an 1850 volume of the collected works. As Wikipedia writes:

Griswold depicted Poe as a depraved, drunk, drug-addled madman and included forged letters as evidence. Griswold’s book was denounced by those who knew Poe well, but it became a popularly accepted one. This was due in part because it was the only full biography available and was widely reprinted, and in part because it seemed to accord with the narrative voice Poe used in much of his fiction.

But the mystery added to this bungling of Poe’s true biography is in who has been called the Poe Toaster …

…an unknown visitor affectionately referred to as the “Poe Toaster” has paid homage to Poe’s grave every year since 1949. Though likely to have been several individuals in the more than 50 years history of this tradition, the tribute is always the same. Every January 19 in the early hours of the morning the man makes a toast of cognac to Poe’s original grave marker and leaves three roses. Members of the Edgar Allan Poe Society in Baltimore have helped this tradition for decades. On August 15, 2007, Sam Porpora, a former historian at the Westminster Church in Baltimore where Poe is buried, claimed that he had started the tradition in the 1960s. The claim that the tradition began in 1949, he said, was a hoax in order to raise money and enhance the profile of the church. His story has not been confirmed, and some details he has given to the press have been pointed out as factually inaccurate.

Testaments to Poe’s notoriety in the literary world come from literary greats such as:

Each of Poe’s detective stories is a root from which a whole literature has developed … Where was the detective story until Poe breathed the breath of life into it?
Arthur Conan Doyle

Pym tells what a very intelligent mind could imagine about the South Polar Region a century ago.
H. G. Wells

Ray Bradbury, an admirer of Poe, featured him as a character in his stories, especially his Fahrenheit 451, a novel about a world where books are banned and burned.
Edgar Allan Poe was interested in the field of cryptography. He invited submissions of ciphers for him to solve in the Alexander’s Weekly Messenger and published an essay called Some Words on Secret Writing in Graham’s Magazine. Poe influenced people in the world of cryptography, like William Friedman, America’s foremost cryptologist at the time.
Edgar Allan Poe has become, at times, as fictionalized as the characters in his stories. Other interesting bits of information about Edgar Allan Poe and his works are [Wikipedia]:
  • The bar in which Poe was last seen drinking before his death still stands in Fells Point in Baltimore, Maryland. Though the name has changed and it is now known as The Horse You Came In On, local lore insists that a ghost they call “Edgar” haunts the rooms above.
  • The United States Navy commissioned a vessel named after Poe, the USS E.A. Poe (IX-103).
  • Poe’s image adorns the bottle cap of Raven Beer.
  • Edgar Allan Poe is credited with inspiration for pro wrestler Scott Levy’s stage name, Raven.
  • In 1996, the NFL franchise known as the Cleveland Browns relocated to Baltimore and assumed a new identity, including a new nickname, the Ravens, which was chosen following a telephone poll by the Baltimore Sun. The poll included three choices, the others being Americans and Marauders, but Ravens won by a wide margin, garnering nearly two-thirds of the 33,288 votes. The Ravens have 3 mascots named Edgar, Allan and Poe.
For a list of Edgar Allan Poe’s list of literary works, see Bibliography of Edgar Allan Poe.
Now you know the general background of the man whose image still appears at Halloween and his stories still are popular in that Gothic genre of literature.