As a Boy
"In our endeavors to recall to memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the very verge of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember."
-Poe
-Poe
The real Edgar Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809, one a drunken father and the other an ill mother. Edgar was the second child of three. His other brother William Henry Leonard Poe would become a poet before his early death and Poe’s sister Rosalie Poe would grow up to teach penmanship at a Richmond girls’ school.
Within three years of Poe’s birth both of his parents had died, and he was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia while Poe’s siblings were separated and went to live with other families. Mr. Allan wanted Poe to be a wealthy businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe had dreams of being a writer thanks to his childhood hero, the British poet Lord Byron.
Early poetic verses found written in a young Poe’s handwriting on the backs of Allan’s ledger sheets revealed how little interest Poe had in the tobacco business. By the age of thirteen, Poe had compiled enough poetry to publish a book, but his headmaster advised Allan against allowing this.
Rosalie Poe
Poe's Sister