Text: Anonymous, “Edgar Allan Poe,” Daily Dispatch (Montgomery, AL), vol. I, no. 9, October 10, 1885, p. 1, col. 4

[page 1, column 4, continued:]

> Edgar Allan Poe.

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Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, February [[January]] 19, 1809. His father was of excellent family, and had been educated for the law, but falling in love with a beautiful actress he married her, and went upon the stage. After a brief married life, spent in wandering from place to place and suffering much from poverty, the husband and wife both died, within a very short time of each other, leaving three young children utterly destitute. Edgar, the second child, was adopted by Mr. John Allan, a wealthy citizen of Richmond, who had no children of his own. He was educated partly at an English school and partly at his home under tutors. He entered the University of Virginia in 1826, and here he began to display his remarkable talents, but he fell in with evil companions, and at the end of a year was expelled for bad conduct. In after years Poe claimed to have spent the years from 1827 to.1829 in Europe and told many tales of his wonderful adventures there, but there is evidence showing that he was in this country all that time, and that his stories of his travels were only prompted by his passion for romancing. In 1829 he published his first volume of poems, and the following year, having decided to adopt the army as a profession Mr. Allen procured him a cadetship at West Point. Here he neglected his studies and drank to excess, and finally was court-martialed and expelled in 1831. He returned to Richmond, where his adopted father again received him kindly. Mr. Allen had recently married his second wife, a young and handsome lady, for whom young Poe immediately conceived a violent attachment, which so enraged his foster-father that a violent rupture occurred. Poe was banished from his home, and when Mr. Allan died not long after this he was found to have made no mention of his adopted son in his will. The circumstances of the young man's life during the next two years are not very well known, but it is thought that during this time he enlisted in the army, but wearying of the discipline, soon deserted. In 1333 the publisher of a literary journal in Baltimore having offered a prize of $100 for a tale in prose and the same sum for a poem, Poe became a contributor and won both prizes. He now entered upon literature as a profession. His history for the next sixteen years is a record of his ups and downs, occasional gleams of prosperity and dark struggles with poverty, terms of sobriety and good behavior followed by most unhappy lapses into debauchery and folly. About 1835 he married his cousin, Virginia Clemm. He was associated with a number of peroidicals [[periodicals]] one after another, and wrote a number of short tales, which displayed remarkable powers of imagination. In 1845 his poem, “The Raven” was published, which attracted more attention than any of his other writings. In 1848 his wife died under very painful circumstances, for there is little doubt that her life was shortened by an actual lack of the necessities of existence. For several years before her death the unhappy poet had but little regular employment, and was reduced to such straits that public appeals were made in his behalf through the newspapers. In 1849 Poe visited Richmond, and while there became engaged to a lady of wealth and refinement. The day was fixed for their marriage, and October 2 Poe started for New York to make preparations for the wedding. At Baltimore he met some of his former boon companions, spent the night in drinking, was found in the street the next morning in a state of delirium, and taken to the hospital where he died in a few hours. The character of Poe is one which it is hard to judge, because he had many excellent qualities and remarkable intellectual powers, united with many faults and a most unfortunate feebleness of will. There is no doubt that many of the sorrows of his unhappy life were brought upon him by his own wrong-doing, but others were traceable to the unfortunate circumstances surrounding, him, for which he was not wholly responsible