15 INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT EDGAR ALLAN POE

 I’ve studied Edgar Allan Poe in-depthly over the past three months, I began to compile a list of obscure facts that I didn’t know about Dear Poe. I’m ready to share with you some of the tidbits that I didn’t quite fully know before.

1. His mother was Elizabeth Arnold Poe

2. Elizabeth, Poe’s mother, died when Edgar was just three years old.

3. Edgars’s father, David, was an alcoholic and abandoned Edgar and his two siblings after Elizabeth’s death. He supposedly died 2 days later.

4. John and Frances Allan took Edgar in but never officially adopted him. They were well-to-do and were able to afford Edgar’s education

5. Edgar gambled away whatever money the Allan’s would send him while he was at the University of Virginia. He was eventually kicked out. They became estranged shortly after.

6. Edgar, who was not on great terms with his biological or guardian families, enlists in the Army as Edgar. A. Perry

7. When he began to write, he wrote under the name Edgar Allan Poe, assuming both surnames.

8. Obsessed with cats, Edgar often wrote with a cat on his shoulder.

9. Edgar’s one and only novel Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket was about a boat capsizing and the crew members drawing straws for who would be eaten; they drew straws and ate Richard Parker. The book bombed. Even though Poe said it was a true story, in his time most of the critics didn’t believe him. They were right to think so because at the time Poe’s book wasn’t true, but just 5 years later a similar wreck happened with the same lead character name Richard Parker, but no cannibalism. Then in 1884 there was another shipwreck where there was cannibalism, and the one who was eaten was indeed Richard Parker.

10. He introduced the first recorded literary detective in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” The detective character would lead to become the prototypical detective we know today. On a side note, a lot of people cite the word detective wasn’t in existence in 1841 for Poe to use in describing his lead character, but it’s been proven to have been printed in 1840, a year before Poe’s novel. It’s very well possible that the word was used commonly in speech at the time.

11. Poe is credited for defining the modern short story.

12. He was early adopter of the genre of Science Fiction. In 1844, he published “The Balloon” in Sun Newspaper. He described a lighter than air balloon that transversed the Atlantic Ocean in three days. The accounts were so believable that the newspaper had to retract the story two days later. However untrue the story was, the Sun newspaper made a ton of money off of newspapers, and they did not give Poe a cent. From then on, Poe hated the Sun newspaper.

13. “The Raven” was a personal challenge Edgar imposed upon himself. He wanted to write 100 line poem, enough for one sitting. He ended up with 108 lines, which apparently was good enough for Poe.

14. Poe originally wanted to use a parrot instead of a raven, but he thought it didn’t evoke the right tone.

15. Edgar changed the writing and publishing world. Before Poe, writing was a noble profession where not many were able to make a living off of solely writing. Edgar insisted that writing would be his career, and he made major strides to find an audience for his entertaining articles, which would become the initial spark of the magazine industry. He even was given $1,500 the last week of his life to start a magazine. However, in his life he was plagued by international copycats where he had no protection that we have now with international copyrights. In many ways, he paved the way for writers to be compensated enough to have a career.

Bonus Fact! In 1848 after his wife’s death in 1847, Poe attempted to commit suicide by ingesting opiates. Four days later, he sat to take this daguerreotype.