Edgar Allan Poe Timeline

Poe attended the grammar school in Irvine, Ayrshire, Scotland, where Allan had been born, before rejoining the family in London in 1816.

While living in London, Poe studied at a boarding school in Chelsea until summer 1817, receiving an education during his years abroad with the Allans.

Poe may have become engaged to Sarah Elmira Royster before he registered at the University of Virginia in February 1826 to study ancient and modern languages. His dorm room at 13 West Range is preserved today.

Image source: University of Virginia

After Jefferson died in July 1826, a fellow student later reported that Poe had been present at the funeral of the university's founder.

Image source: Thomas Jefferson

In 1824, Poe served as the lieutenant of the Richmond youth honor guard as the city celebrated the visit of the Marquis de Lafayette, the famed Revolutionary War hero.

As Poe was unable to support himself, he decided to enlist in the United States Army as a private on May 27, 1827, using the assumed name 'Edgar A. Perry'.

Image source: United States Army

Poe's 1st Regiment of Artillery was posted to Fort Moultrie in Charleston, South Carolina, before embarking on the brig Waltham on November 8, 1827. The island later inspired his tale 'The Gold-Bug'.

Image source: Fort Moultrie

Poe was finally discharged on April 15, 1829, after securing a replacement to finish his enlistment, allowing him to pursue other opportunities.

Poe traveled to West Point and matriculated as a cadet on July 1, 1830, continuing his military education after his Army service.

Image source: United States Military Academy

On February 8, 1831, Poe was tried for gross neglect of duty and disobedience of orders for refusing to attend formations, classes, and church, effectively ending his West Point career.

Instead of remaining in Richmond, Poe traveled to Boston in April 1827, sustaining himself with odd jobs as a clerk and newspaper contributor while pursuing his literary ambitions.

That September, Poe received 'the very first words of encouragement I ever remember to have heard' in a review by influential critic John Neal, prompting Poe to dedicate one of the poems to Neal in his second book, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems, published in Baltimore in 1829.

Image source: John Neal

Poe left for New York in February 1831 and then released a third volume of poems, simply titled Poems, continuing his efforts to establish himself as a writer.

The Baltimore Saturday Visiter awarded Poe a prize in October 1833 for his often overlooked short story 'MS. Found in a Bottle', an early sign of recognition for his fiction.

Image source: MS. Found in a Bottle

In 1835, Poe became assistant editor of the Southern Literary Messenger, but White discharged him within a few weeks, allegedly for being drunk on the job. He remained associated with the Messenger until January 1837.

Image source: Southern Literary Messenger

In 1838, Poe relocated to Philadelphia, where he lived at five different residences between 1838 and 1844, one of which at 532 N. 7th Street is now preserved as a historic site.

In the summer of 1839, Poe became assistant editor of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, one of several editorial positions he held during his Philadelphia years.

Image source: Burton's Gentleman's Magazine

Also in 1839, the collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque was published in two volumes, though Poe received little remuneration from it and the volumes received generally mixed reviews.

Image source: Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque

In June 1840, Poe published a prospectus announcing his intentions to start his own journal called The Stylus, originally intended to be called The Penn since it would have been based in Philadelphia. He bought advertising space in the June 6, 1840, issue of Philadelphia's Saturday Evening Post.

Image source: Stylus

In July 1841, Poe published an essay called 'A Few Words on Secret Writing' in Graham's Magazine, showcasing his fascination with cryptography. Two ciphers he published in 1841 under the name 'W. Tyler' were not solved until 1992 and 2000 respectively.

Image source: The Gold-Bug

Poe failed to appear for a meeting with Thomas to discuss an appointment in mid-September 1842, claiming to have been sick, though Thomas believed that he had been drunk.

On January 29, 1845, Poe's poem 'The Raven' appeared in the Evening Mirror and quickly became a popular sensation. It made Poe a household name almost instantly, though he was paid only $9 (equivalent to $311 in 2025) for its publication.

Image source: The Raven

The Broadway Journal failed in 1846, and Poe moved to a cottage in Fordham, New York, in the Bronx, where he would spend the final years caring for his ailing wife.

Image source: Edgar Allan Poe Cottage

Eureka: A Prose Poem, an essay written in 1848, included a cosmological theory that presaged the Big Bang theory by 80 years, as well as the first plausible solution to Olbers' paradox.

Image source: Eureka: A Prose Poem

Poe returned to Baltimore in March 1831 to live with his aunt, brother, and cousin. His elder brother Henry had been seriously ill due in part to complications from alcoholism, and he died on August 1, 1831.

Image source: Henry Poe

Poe returned to Baltimore, where he obtained a license to marry his cousin Virginia on September 22, 1835, though it is unknown if they were actually married at that time.

Image source: Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe

On May 16, 1836, when he was 27, Poe officially married his 13-year-old cousin Virginia at a Presbyterian wedding ceremony performed by Amasa Converse at their Richmond boarding house, with a witness falsely attesting Clemm's age as 21.

One evening in January 1842, Virginia showed the first signs of consumption, or tuberculosis, while singing and playing the piano, which Poe described as the breaking of a blood vessel in her throat.

Virginia died of tuberculosis at the Fordham cottage on January 30, 1847, a devastating loss that deeply affected Poe for the remainder of his life.

On October 3, 1849, Poe was found semiconscious in Baltimore, 'in great distress, and... in need of immediate assistance', under circumstances that remain mysterious to this day.

Image source: Death of Edgar Allan Poe

Poe was taken to Washington Medical College, where he died on Sunday, October 7, 1849, at 5:00 in the morning, aged 40, before his planned journal The Stylus ever began publishing.

Griswold, who bore a grudge against Poe since 1842, wrote a biographical article called 'Memoir of the Author', included in an 1850 volume of the collected works, which damaged Poe's reputation for decades.

Image source: Rufus Wilmot Griswold

In 1863, a medium named Lizzie Doten published Poems of the Inner Life, which compiled several poems she claimed were written by the channeled spirits of dead authors, including Poe.

Image source: Lizzie Doten

One theory dating from 1872 suggests that Poe's death resulted from cooping, a form of electoral fraud, in which citizens were forced to vote for a particular candidate, sometimes leading to violence and even murder.

Between 1949 and 2009, a bottle of cognac and three roses were left at Poe's original grave marker every January 19 by an unknown visitor affectionately referred to as the 'Poe Toaster'. Sam Porpora claimed on August 15, 2007, that he had started the tradition in 1949. The last appearance was on January 19, 2009, Poe's bicentennial.

Image source: Poe Toaster

In 2009, the intersection of Charles and Boylston streets in Boston, two blocks north of his birthplace, was designated 'Edgar Allan Poe Square' in honor of the writer.

In December 2009, one copy of Poe's exceedingly rare first book sold at Christie's auctioneers in New York City for $662,500, a record price paid for a work of American literature.

Image source: Tamerlane (poem)

In 2013, The Guardian cited Pym as one of the greatest novels ever written in the English language, noting its influence on later authors such as Doyle, Henry James, B. Traven, and others. Wells noted, 'Pym tells what a very intelligent mind could imagine about the south polar region a century ago.'

Image source: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket

Fundraising completed in March 2014 for a permanent memorial sculpture known as Poe Returning to Boston at Edgar Allan Poe Square. The public unveiling on October 5, 2014, was attended by former U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky.

Image source: Poe Returning to Boston