and to find adventure. He published his first book Tamerlane at
the age of eighteen, and for adventure he enlisted in the United
States Army. Two years later he heard that Frances Allan, the only
mother he had ever known, was dying of tuberculosis and wanted
to see him before she died. By the time Poe returned to Richmond
she had already been buried.
He didn't stay long in the army because John Allan refused to
send him any money and it is conjectured that Edgar purposely
broke the rules and ignored his duties so that he would be
dismissed.
The Struggling Writer
In 1831, Edgar Allan Poe went to New York City where he had
some of his poetry published but he was inundated with
rejections from every magazine. Without any money, friends and
in dire crisis, he wrote to John Allan for some help and received
no reply. In 1834, John Allan died. There was no mention of Edgar
in his will.
Fortunately, Edgar won a literary contest in 1835 (with his story
“The Manuscript Found in a Bottle”) and was offered the job of
the editor at a newspaper. In 1836, Edgar married his cousin,
Virginia. He was 27 and she was 13. Poe achieved a lot of success
managing the newspaper (the Southern Literary Messenger) but
resigned complaining about his poor salary. From 1837 onward,
Poe wrote a few books including his first volume of short stories
titled "Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque". For this collection,
he received the copyright for 20 copies off the book but no
money.
Sometime in 1840, while working as the editor for Graham’s
Magazine, Poe published his first detective story, "The Murders in
the Rue Morgue", considered today, to be one of the classics of
detective fiction. In spite of his success at the magazine, he quit
in order to start his own magazine (The Stylus) which proved to
be a miserable failure. The only money he earned at this time was
$100 for his story “The Gold Bug” (which sold 300,000 copies!)
but barely managed to support his family.
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