ersity and broke off Poe’s engagement to Sarah Elmira Royster, his Richmond sweetheart. His relationship with Allan was declined and he moved from his foster father and enlisted in the army. Also in 1827, he went to Boston where he wrote his fist book “Tamerlane and other poems” that he sold for $.12 a copy but it didn’t sell. He served a two year term while waiting for an appointment to the US Military Academy. While temporarily reconciled, Allan secured him an appointment to the academy. In 1830 Poe entered the US Military Academy at West Point, NY, where he excelled in languages but was expelled in 1831 and now his foster father disowned him permanently. Later on sometime after 1831 he moved to Baltimore where he lived with his aunt, Maria Clemm, and her daughter- his cousin, Virginia Clemm. March 27, 1834 John Allan dies leaving Poe with nothing. In May of 1836 he married Virginia, his 13-year old cousin. For 10 years Poe worked as an editor for various periodicals and contributor to magazines in several cites on the pay of $10 a week, so he was unable to support his family, his aunt, Virginia, and himself. Lots of time they went without eating. But it was in one of those that his story “The Fall of the House of Usher” first appeared in 1839. He unsuccessfully tried to found and edit his own magazine which would have granted him financial security and artistic control in what he considered a hostile literary marketplace. The last years of Poe’s life was a tragic period. In January of 1842 Virginia broke a blood vessel while singing, and died of tuberculosis on January 30, 1847 after five years of illness. Then Poe himself became ill, he had a deadly addiction to liquor and his alleged use of drugs which probably contributed to his early death. In the summer of 1849 he revisited Richmond, lectured , and was accepted anew by the fiance he had lost in 1826. After his return north he was found u...
