Edgar Allan Poe was widely renowned as being one of the first great writers of the horror genre. His work paved the way for many others to come along, even to this day. He lived an up and down life of victories and defeats, seemingly one after the other. As he wrote many mysteries, there was one mystery that never provided a reveal point—his death.
His Early Life in Brief: Poe was born Edgar Poe in Boston, Massachusetts in January 19, 1809, to an actor and his British wife. About one year later the actor abandoned the family, and the wife died one year after that of natural causes in Boston. At age two Poe went to live with a foster family named Allan, successful Richmond Virginia merchants. His name was informally changed to Edgar Allan Poe. The Allan family went to Great Britain in 1815, where Poe as a youth attended school. In 1820, the family returned to Richmond where Allan received a very large inheritance from his rich uncle. In 1826, Poe registered at the University of Virginia. It is not clear but he may have been engaged beforehand to his then sweetheart, Sarah Elmira Royster. He became estranged from the Allan family over money he thought he was entitled to, and his gambling debts. He left the University of Virginia after one year, and did not feel welcome with the Allan’s back in Richmond. His comfort level deteriorated further after his girlfriend married another man. In 1827, Poe joined the army and served two years before receiving an appointment to West Point. Before attending West Point, he went to Baltimore and lived with his widowed aunt, his older brother, and his cousin Virginia Eliz Clemm. He started publishing his poems during that period and received perhaps the only encouragement of his life up to that time from renowned author and critic John Neal. His foster mother died, and Allan remarried afterward, but Poe’s relationship with Allan and his new wife disintegrated. In 1831, Poe was dismissed from West Point without finishing, although he secretly sought a dismissal. Allan disowned him owing to the quarreling they had over money, and Allan’s children born out of wedlock. Poe moved to New York and released another volume of poems largely due to support from fellow West Point cadets. He later returned to Baltimore to live again with his aunt, but his older brother was very ill and died in August, 1831.
Poe’s Writing Career: Over the next five years, Poe made several attempts to support himself as a writer, mostly unsuccessfully. His short story “MS. Found in a Bottle” won him a prize from the Baltimore Saturday Visiter [sic] in October, 1833, and caught the attention of a rich author/politician named John P. Kennedy. It was this contact who gave him the first major break in his career by introducing him to Thomas White, the editor of the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond. Poe became the assistant editor of the publication, but was later discharged for drunken behavior. He was reinstated by White after promising to clean up his act. At about this time he obtained a marriage license to wed his thirteen-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm. They were officially married on May 16, 1836. Poe and his wife then moved to Philadelphia where he published his only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. From 1838 to 1844, he lived at four different residences. In 1839, he became the assistant editor of Burton’s Gentlemen’s Magazine. He also published another collection of poems and short stories, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, to mixed reviews. A year later Poe became a writer and co-editor at Graham’s Magazine a successful monthly publication. Poe also sought a position with the United States Custom House in Philadelphia through a connection he made with a man who knew the son of then President John Tyler. However, it all fell through when he missed a meeting with this connection and Tyler’s son apparently owing to being drunk. At this stage in his life in 1842, his wife showed signs of Tuberculosis, and never fully recovered. Poe went back to New York and became the editor, and later the owner, of the Broadway Journal. He was a fierce literary critic, and alienated himself from other writers of the time by publicly accusing Henry Wadsworth Longfellow of plagiarism. He broadened this criticism to include many other writers who he said confused the source of other author’s ideas with their own thoughts and observations. In January, 1845, he published “The Raven”, arguably his best and most popular poem. It became an instant success and propelled Poe to widespread visibility. About a year or so later in 1846, the Broadway Journal failed financially and had to close. Poe moved to a cottage in Fordham, N.Y. where Virginia died in January, 1847. Her death caused him to become increasingly unstable including drinking and erratic behavior. He began courting Sarah Helen Whitman, a poet, but that relationship fell through also. Throughout this chaotic period of his life, Poe became an accomplished author, and obtained stature as a Great American writer.
Events Leading to His Death: His turbulent life began to improve as he spent three months in Richmond from July, 1849, to September, 1849, working up a new magazine project, and once-again starting a relationship with his first girlfriend, Sarah Elmira Royster, now a widow with two children and a lot of money. But during an unannounced visit to see a friend, he appeared to be “pale and haggard, with a wild expression in his eyes.” Poe told the friend that someone was trying to kill him. On September 27, he departed Richmond for New York, with the apparent intentions to return to Richmond for an editor’s job at the new magazine, and to get married to Sarah Elmira Royster. On October 3, presumable still on his way back to New York, he was found delirious in Ryan’s Tavern (also known as Gunner’s Hall) in Baltimore. A patron sent a letter to Joseph E. Snodgrass, an acquaintance of Poe’s, explaining his predicament and requesting help. Snodgrass came to the Tavern and found Poe with shabby clothes, worn-out shoes, and an unkept appearance that was opposite of what Poe prided himself with—nice clothes and clean, straightened up appearance. Furthermore, Poe appeared to be drunk. He was taken to a physician who examined him and placed him in the drunk tank at Washington College Hospital. He was there under observation, but although conscious, he never became coherent enough to explain to anyone what happened to him. He called out many times for an unknown person named “Reynolds.” He was delirious and also delusional at times until he died October 7, 1849, at the age of 40 years.
Major Theories of His Death: There was no autopsy performed, no medical records of Poe’s treatment, and the physician, John Joseph Moran, gave conflicting reports of what happened and what Poe said from his death bed. His cause of death has been disputed ever since, with more than just a handful of theories. The first and most prevalent theory was that his death was possibly suicide owing to depression. A year earlier, he nearly died from an overdose of laudanum, a tincture of opium produced by dissolving opium poppies in ethanol. However, analysis of his writing does not show any inclination toward depression or suicide. The most popular assumption made about Poe’s cause of death was alcoholism due to his erratic behavior. However, several who knew him well have since come forth to say that he would drink on occasion, but never to excess. He even lectured at temperance meetings on drinking responsibly. It stands to reason that drinking was somehow involved in his death though perhaps not the paramount cause. Sometime afterward, the theory that he was involved with “cooping” arose, and an admirer, William Hand Browne of Baltimore, presented this theory to Poe’s biographer. Cooping is a practice that takes place during an election where voters are kidnapped, plied with alcohol, dressed in different clothes, and sent up to vote for a specific candidate, using the name of a legitimate registered voter. Further, it was election day in Baltimore, a city that had a bad reputation for cooping, and Ryan’s Tavern was a polling place. This would help account for the old clothes and disheveled appearance. But curiously, his trunk of clothes and belongings were found behind the Swan Tavern in Richmond.
Other Theories: The list of theories runs long and deep. One of them has Poe being run out of Richmond by his girlfriend’s brothers, and plied with alcohol until he was inebriated. They may have forced him to wear old shabby clothes to look like a bum, all in an effort to discredit him—an item that would tie in with his clothes never leaving Richmond. Poisoning from a variety of sources was also mixed in with the best theories until modern science proved them all false. Still more theories are centered around various medical maladies such as rabies, meningitis, brain tumors, and tuberculosis. Other causes such as diabetes, enzyme deficiency, syphilis, apoplexy, delirium tremens, epilepsy, meningeal inflammation, and even heart disease have all risen to the surface. Most of this mystery would have been put to rest had there been an autopsy of Poe’s body and medical records retained. It may be that Moran simply looked at Poe as some poor alcoholic that simply drank himself to death.
Legacy: The enigma surrounding Poe’s death has done a lot for his legacy by cloaking his death in a mystery the same is if it had been scripted into one of his stories or poems. After his first grave stone was destroyed in a railway accident, he was subsequently exhumed and buried again in 1875 along with his wife and aunt in the burying grounds of the University of Maryland School of Law’s churchyard. The second gravestone was a work of art owing to poet Paul Hamiton Hayne, who visited the original grave in 1873, and published a newspaper article about the sad state of the grave marker. A major campaign ensued to collect enough money to provide a suitable resting place and grave marker. The day after his death, the New York Tribune published an obituary written by Rufus Wilmot Griswold. The obituary oscillated between praising the work of Poe’s talented writing and condemning his temperament and ambition. It noted that Poe was a “brilliant, but erratic star,” but was also known for excessive arrogance, and quick temper. Griswold also became Poe’s literary executor giving him control of copyrights and distribution of his work. Griswold went on to write the first complete biography of Poe which amounted to character assassination in that it depicted Poe as a “depraved, drunk, drug-addled madman.” It is not clear how much of this biography was accurate because Griswold was only an acquaintance of Poe’s and not a close confidant. Those who knew him disputed Griswold’s description of Poe, but the damage had been done, and the biography, although later challenged by other biographies, remains the most commonly accepted depiction of Poe today.
Conclusions: He was one of the first to write in the horror genre, and he was a strong influence on many others who followed. Numerous authors and script writers were influence by Poe’s horror tales, not the least of which was Alfred Hitchcock, who said 100 years after Poe’s death that “It’s because I liked Edgar Allan Poe’s stories so much that I began to make suspense films.” The Baltimore NFL football team is named the “Ravens” in honor of Poe’s famous poem. Much of his material was highly acclaimed, although he did not always receive corresponding compensation for it. He was like a cat that was knocked off a rooftop but always landed on its feet. His last mystery, his death, is still unsolved to this day.
Sources:
National Geographic, Murder or Madness, What Really Killed Edgar Allan Poe? By Erin Blakemore, October 7, 2024.
Wikipedia, Death of Edgar Allan Poe.