INTRODUCTION

I. THE MAIN FACTS IN THE LIFE OF POE

Edgar Allan Poe was born at Boston on January 19, 1809.1 His father, David Poe, Jr., was a native of Baltimore; his mother, whose maiden name was Elizabeth Arnold, was born in England, but came to America in youth. There were two other children : William Henry, born in 1807, and Rosalie MacKenzie, born in 1810. Poe's parents were both actors, his mother displaying larger gifts than his father, though neither one attained to distinction. Their acting was confined to the American cities along

1 The chief biographies of Poe are those of George E. Woodberry (Edgar Allan Poe, published at Boston in 1885, and in a revised edition in two volumes in 1909) and John H. Ingram (Life and Letters of Edgar Allan Poe, first published in two volumes at London in 1880, and later in a single volume, but enlarged, in 1886). Among other biographies of Poe are those of James A. Harrison (the first volume of the "Virginia Poe," New York, 1902), William F. Gill (The Life of Edgar Allan Poe, New York, 1877), Mrs. S. A. Weiss (The Home Life of Poe, New York, 1907), and John Macy (Edgar Allan Poe, Boston, 1907), and the prefatory memoirs of Rufus W. Griswold (The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, New York, 1850, III, pp. xxi-lv), E. L. Didier (Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, New York, 1877, pp. 19–129), R. H. Stoddard (The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, New York [1884], I, pp. 1–200), and J. H. Whitty (The Complete Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, Boston, 1911, pp. xix-lxxxvi). The seventeenth volume of the "Virginia Poe" contains a collection of Poe's letters.

2 The date of David Poe's birth is given in the records of the First Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, as July 18, 1784. Mrs. Poe was born in 1786 or 1787; see the article of Professor C. A. Smith in the Philadelphia Public Ledger for May 25, 1913. She was first married in 1802 to C. D.. Hopkins, who died in October, 1805. Her marriage to David Poe took place late in 1805 or early in 1806 (see Woodberry, I, pp. 7, 9, 361).

3 William Henry Poe died in 1831 (the date of his burial is given in the records of the First Presbyterian Church at Baltimore as August 2, 1831). Rosalie Poe died July 22, 1874.

the Atlantic coast, from Portland to Savannah.1 Poe's mother died in Richmond on December 8, 1811. His father probably died in the same year, though neither. the time nor the place of his death is known with certainty.2

Shortly after the death of his mother, young Edgar was adopted by John Allan, a well-to-do merchant of Richmond. Tradition has it that he was petted and spoiled by Mr. Allan and his wife, and it is well established that he was devoted to Mrs. Allan. Preserved among the manuscript treasures of the Library of Congress at Washington are the business papers and office books of Mr. Allan's firm, Ellis & Allan, and in these we catch from time to time glimpses of the child as he grew into youth and manhood.* In the summer of 1812, we learn from one of the letters in this collection, he went with Mrs. Allan to a health resort in the mountains of Virginia, where he impressed a Baltimore guest who saw him there as being both a "good" and a pretty" boy; from another letter we learn that he suffered from an attack

1 See Woodberry, I, pp. 358 f.

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2 From a contemporary notice of Mrs. Poe, quoted by Woodberry (I, pp. 363 f.), it would appear that David Poe died in Norfolk in the summer of 1811; but Poe wrote to a cousin, William Poe, of Georgia, in 1835, that his father's death occurred after the death of his mother (Letters, p. 15).

3 There is no evidence that he was ever legally adopted by Mr. Allan, though Poe's relatives in Baltimore apparently understood that this was Mr. Allan's intention, and Poe did not abandon the hope of succeeding to all, or a part, of Mr. Allan's fortune until after the latter's second marriage in 1830. On his death, however, in 1834, he left Poe nothing. See on this point the early letter of his aunt, Mrs. Herring, in the Sewanee Review, XX, pp. 202 f.; his letter to Kennedy written in November, 1834 (Woodberry, I, p. 104); and the reminiscences of T. H. Ellis in the Richmond (Virginia) Standard of May 7, 1881.

4 See the articles by the present editor in Modern Language Notes for April, 1910 (XXV, pp. 127 f.), and the Sewanee Review for April, 1912 (XX, pp. 201 f.). And see also the Edgar Allan Poe Letters till now Unpublished, ed. Mrs. Mary Newton Stanard (Philadelphia, 1925), a volume containing twenty-eight letters written by Poe to John Allan. These letters, the originals of which are preserved in the Valentine Museum, in Richmond, Virginia, are elsewhere referred to as the Valentine Letters.

of whooping-cough in the spring and summer of 1813; and a third letter reveals the fact that he was put to school with the Richmond schoolmaster, William Ewing, at some time in the winter or spring of 1814-1815.1

In June, 1815, Mr. and Mrs. Allan, with Edgar and a sister of Mrs. Allan, sailed for England, where Mr. Allan set up a branch of his business house. The family went first after their arrival at Liverpool on a trip into Scotland for a visit with Mr. Allan's relatives there; but early in October they settled down in London; and there they remained for the next five years. During most of the first year (possibly the first two years) of his stay in London, Poe attended a school kept by the Misses Dubourg at 146 Sloane Street, Chelsea; 2 but his last three years were spent at the academy of the Reverend John Bransby at Stoke Newington, whose establishment he professes to describe in his story William Wilson. That his progress at the latter school was satisfactory is attested both by "Dr." Bransby, who recalled him in after years as a "quick and clever boy" (though "spoilt "), and by Mr. Allan, who in 1818 wrote to his partner in Richmond: "Edgar is a fine boy and reads Latin pretty sharply," and a year later described him as being "a good scholar" and as "both_able and willing to

In 1819 the London branch of the firm of Ellis & Allan found itself unable to meet its business engagements, and the following summer Mr. Allan returned to Virginia. Poe now attended for several years an academy in Richmond conducted, first, by Joseph H. Clarke and later by William Burke; and it is said that in 1825 he studied for some time under private tutors. One of his chief diversions at this time was swimming. On one occasion, so he

1 Sewanee Review, XX, pp. 202-203.

2 See the Dial for February 17, 1916, and for May 11, 1916.

8 See the London Athenæum for October 19, 1878, p. 496.

4 Ibid., p. 497.

5 Sewanee Review, XX, pp. 205-206.

6 Woodberry, I, p. 29; Mrs. Weiss, p. 45.