1809 – Edgar Poe is born, to David and Elizabeth Poe, on the 19^th of January.

1810 – His father abandons the family.

1811 – His mother dies of tuberculosis, aged 24. John and Frances Allen become guardians to Poe. His brother and sister are fostered elsewhere.

1815-20 – Moves to England, with the Allens, where he is schooled.

1825 – Courts Sarah Elmira Royster; her parents disapprove, causing the relationship to end.

1826 – Studies French, Spanish, Italian and Latin at the University of Virginia. Incurs gambling and drinking debts. John Allen, who received a large inheritance the previous year, refuses to offer financial support. Poe is forced to leave university in December of the same year.

1827 – Poe enlists in the U.S. Army, as ‘Edgar A. Perry’, after quarrelling with the Allens and leaving home.

1829 – Promoted to Sergeant Major, then discharged from the army in March.

1831 – Induces own expulsion from West Point Military Academy, by conscious bad behaviour. Moves in with aunt, Marie Clemm & her daughter, Virginia.

1836 – Poe, now aged 27, marries his 13 year old cousin, Virginia.

1847 – Virginia Clemm Poe dies and Poe falls ill.

1849 – Becomes engaged to Sarah Elmira Royster, now also widowed. Found ‘delirious’, in Baltimore, on the 3^rd of October and is dead by the 7^th.

Personal Quotes

“Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.”

“The scariest monsters are the ones that lurk within our souls…”

“Sometimes I’m terrified of my heart; of its constant hunger for whatever it is it wants. The way it stops and starts.”

“There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion.”

“Men have called me mad; but the question is not settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest of intelligence…”

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