Edgar Allan Poe Informative Time Organizer
POE INTERACTIVE TIMELINE ORGANIZER http://knowingpoe.thinkport.org/person/timeline.asp Include the year with all of the information you include in your organizer.
Poe’s Vital Statistics
Date of Birth
January 19th 1809
Place of Birth
Boston, Massachussetts
Name at Birth
Edgar Poe
Poe the Early Years
Record information about Poe’s birth parents
When Poe was two years (1811) old his mother died and his alcoholic father had already left his family.
Record information about Poe’s adopted parents
At 2 (1811) years old the Allans, who worked at the tobacco industry, adopted him.
Record Poe’s name at baptism
The Allans changed his name to Edgar Allan Poe (1812)
Places Poe Lived
Record names and dates of the places Poe lived during his lifetime. …show more content…
Boston 1809-1811 1811-1815 Richmond, VA London, England 1815-1820 Returns to Richmond although travels constantly to Baltimore . 1821 Enlists in the army in Boston, Massachusetts 1827 Charleston, SC 1828 Fortress Monroe, VA 1829 Baltimore, Maryland 1831 Moves to Richmond with his family 1835 New York City 1837 Philadelphia, PA 1838 New York City, 1844 Returns to Richmond, VA 1849 Attempts to go to NYC, ends up in Baltimore and eventually dies, 1849
Poe’s Writing
Name the new genre Poe is accredited with creating.
Defective-fiction
Record some of the titles and dates of Poe’s work.
The Tell-Tale Heart 1843
The Cask of Amontillado 1846
The Raven 1845
The Masque of The Read 1850
The Fall of The House of Usher 1839
The Pit and the Pendulum 1843
The Purloined Letter 1845
Ligeia 1838
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar 1845
The Black Cat 1842
Important Women in Poe’s Life
List the important women in Poe’s life and when they died.
Although Poe never really had a proper social interaction, Eliza Hopkins Poe (his mother), affected him tremendously because of her premature death on December 8, 1811.
Frances Valentine Allan was the adoptive mother of Poe and also his first teacher. His relationship with him was very close but ended when Poe was only 20 years old on February 28th, 1829.
Maria Clemm, was the aunt, mother of Virginia Clemm Poe (his wife) and the mother in law of Poe lived with him and her daughter and represented an important figure in Poe’s and Virginia’s marriage. She died on February 16th, 1871.
Amanda Royster was believed to be Poe’s teen sweatheart when she was only 15, but Poe left for college. After she divorced from his first husband, she restarted the relationship with Poe, who had lost his wife, but could never get married because Poe died. She died on February 11th 1888.
Virginia Clemm Poe, was probably the most important woman in Poe’s life. She was Poe’s only wife but also his cousin. They married when she was only 13 and he was 27, this marriage only lasted for some years as she died of tuberculosis on January 30th, 1847.
Poe’s Relationship With His Father
Record examples that detail Poe’s relationship with his father.
Poe’s relationship with his fathe was described as volatile, mainly because both had strong ideas and were brutally independent. The biggest problem in their relation happened in 1827, when Poe was sent to college, the problem was that John Allan (Poe’s adoptive father) saw college as an expensive luxury so he the allowance that he gave to Poe was very short. This led Poe to gamble and eventually into having a large debt. After a brutally exchange of words, Allan decided not to pay his debts, making Poe to leave college and enrolled into the army (May 1827). He then wrote a letter to his father telling Allan that if he wanted to forget that Poe was his son he should tell Poe inmediatly.
Although no one knows exactly what was his dad’s anwer, Allan refused helping Poe in his career as a poet. Frances Allan (Poe’s mother) died, then John Allan re-married with a women that was not so nice with Poe, this drove him into becoming an alcholic
Poe’s Marriage
Record Poe’s wife’s name and details of who she was.
Poe’s wife was Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe and was born on August 15th, 1822 in the city of Baltimore, Maryland. She is also the cousin of Poe. They met just four months later he was discharged from the military in 1829. As an attempt to get Virginia closer and into a monogamous relationship, in 1835 he invited her to move to Richmon, Virginia where he would provide a house and money. Later that year, he returned to Baltimore and filed for a marriage license which was granted to him; Clemm, 13, and Poe, 27, had their official wedding ceremony on May 16th 1836. As an important fact, their relationship was always seen in a brother-sister relationship and many assured that Virginia died virgin.
She got sick of tuberculosis which ended her life on January 30th 1847.
Poe’s Financial Struggles
Record examples of Poe’s financial struggles.
Because of the little economical support that he received from his father during college, he had to quit college and join the army to sustent himself and pay his bills. After leaving the army, Poe did not received a regular salary and the ocassionall payments he did received were from literary conests. He was also not included in his father will, making his financial struggle bigger. Another factor that affected his economic wealth was the fact that he was alcoholic making work something harder to do, plus his wife (and also cousin) developed tuberculosis which requested a pricy treatment.
Poe’s Challenges With Employment
Record examples of the struggles Poe faced with employment.
There is no information about Poe having a stable job, he was constantly moving from city to city. Most of his temporal jobs were related to writing such as working in The Gentlemen’s Magazine, Graham’s Magazine, Saturday Evening Post, among others. Not only it was difficult to get a job because of his constant “movement” but also it was due to his alcoholism and addiction to gamble that made him incompetent to work as an average person. During his later years, Poe did not had an actual job but in fact received money from what his writing produced.
Other Interesting Facts
Record examples of other interesting facts or information from the timeline.
One of the most interesting facts about Edgar Allan Poe’s life is his death. There is nothing clear about his death, but rather there are several hypothesis regarding how he lost his life. The most known hypothesis is Poe leaving Richmond, Virginia for New York City on September 27, 1849; no one knew about him for about a week until (October 3) he abruptly appearead on a street of Baltimore, Maryland wearing clothes that were not his in a delirious state of mind. He was then taken to the Washington College Hospital were he died the morning of October 7. His most acclaimed poem, The Raven was sold to a New Yorker journal and for the small amount of 9 USD, although it mad him famous. Because of his bad relation with his “adoptive” family (he was never officialy adopted), the Allans, he never ever signed any of his works “Edgar Allan Poe”, he prefered to signed documents as Edgar A.
Poe or just E.A.P.
MAKING CONNECTIONS WITH THE FACTS
What were some of the tragic events Poe faced during his life? How do you think these may have influenced Poe's writing?
Edgar Allan Poe’s writing is consider to be “dark” commonly with a tragic plot, the reason of this is mostly because of his tragic childhood. Some of the events that may have influenced Poe’s writing was primarly the fact that by the time he was 2 years old he was an infant with a death mother and a father that had abandon him, but also the fact that he was “adopted” by a family, who’s patriachal figure did not got along with Poe might have affected him. In other words, not having biological parents, having an adoptive father that you don’t get a long, and then having an adoptive mother that you get a long but dies before Poe was 21, made the american author a very cold-minded person. In my opinion all of this events limited Poe in developing emotions and like most of the writers, he was just portraying his thoughts through his
poems.
It’s been told that the premature death of Poe’s wife, Virginia Clemm, had such an impact that he used the symbol/image of a dying young women as a motif , this can be seen in his poem The Raven.
Poe might have sometimes been described as opinionated, romantic, impractical, arrogant, ingenious, creative, intelligent and restless. Did you find examples in your research that would support these descriptions?
I feel that the letter Poe wrote to his adoptive father asking him to write respond if he “is still his son” was a bit arrogant or at least dramatic to say the least. Even though his relationship with his father was very bad, I thought that the letter was inncessary and it was a way in which Poe told his father “I’m very busy and have an important life, tell me if you want to join my (“awesome”) life so I don’t keep wasting my time. Also the only reason to write this letter was not only because he had a bad relationship with his father but because he had a strong opinion he thought he had to share, so I would say he was also opinionated. As far as the other words, I don’t have any other examples to support any, except that he was creative and he used it in the creation of his diverse literary works.
Do you think many of the themes of Poe's work can be explained by the events in his life?
They can be explained because most of his theme are related to something tragic, like several events in his life. An author’s personal experience affects not only his thoughts but also his writing. Poe’s tragic events such as the death of his mother, adoptive mother and even his wife/cousin (that counts double) shaped him as a person and made him write things related to death, hate, and misfortune. It’s important to mention that in order to be able to link the events in his life and Poe’s work, I should learn and read more about Poe’s reading.
Do you think Poe's frequent moves impacted his work? Explain.
I believe that they might have impacted his work because of the different societies in each town. Although I’m not a connoisseur of Poe’s work, I do believe that each of the cities he visited had a different society that might have influenced in Poe’s writing. Because several authors normally write poems, stories or novels about the society where they live, it’s very likely that depending on the society that Poe was living in he was going to write about a certain topic or theme. And moving frequently helped him encounter several opinions and ways of living that could easily impacted his work. Living in two different countries might have impacted in the language of some of his works just because the language used in England is different than the one used in the U.S.
Are you surprised that Poe didn't get along with his father? Explain.
No I’m not surpised at all, specially because it’s been said that bod persons were very independent and very strong-minded. Essentially, it’s two things that if you mix it will probably end in constant disagreement and may leed to fights. It’s also important to notice that Allan considered him as a self-made man, meaning that his expectancies on Poe were big; and all of this affected when not only Poe tells his father that he has a huge debt, but also when he tells him that he wants to be a writer (a job with a very bad salary). Basically the father’s expectancies, Poe’s different ideas (and alcoholism) and that both were stubborn, doesn’t surprises me that his relationship with his adoptive father was never good.
Poe was recognized as a skilled writer during his lifetime and yet he was often very poor. Do you think this would happen if Poe had lived today? Explain.
Absolutely; several talented writers that are even considered classics are not always appreciated by the general public. The problem is that skilled writers are not always popular while they live just because they do not necessarly write their books for a wide audience. Sadly this is also because the general public no longer read or know how to read appreciate good literature. But I wouldn’t be surprised that a skilled writer would later be “discovered” after his death, this happens because a lot of times the actual society is not culturally prepared for a specific literary work, so time has to pass. In the case of Poe, although he did not achieved a fortune he has developed a fame ever since his death to the point that his books are still sold at very, very high prices even though they can be legally acquired for free.
Do you think the time period Poe lived during is reflected in his writing? Explain.
Even though I do not know anything about Poe’s writing because I haven’t read it, I’m sure that the time period is always reflected in any author’s writing. The reason of this is because many writers critices or at least shows the society where they lived. According to the time period, is what (mosly) the theme is going to be. It’s very probable that Poe might reflect a relevant subject to his time period or show through his writing how people acted and thought. Any literary movements might had also afected some or all of his writings, specially on the structure and the language.
Poe’s Vital Statistics
Date of Birth
January 19th 1809
Place of Birth
Boston, Massachussetts
Name at Birth
Edgar Poe
Poe the Early Years
Record information about Poe’s birth parents
When Poe was two years (1811) old his mother died and his alcoholic father had already left his family.
Record information about Poe’s adopted parents
At 2 (1811) years old the Allans, who worked at the tobacco industry, adopted him.
Record Poe’s name at baptism
The Allans changed his name to Edgar Allan Poe (1812)
Places Poe Lived
Record names and dates of the places Poe lived during his lifetime. …show more content…
Boston 1809-1811 1811-1815 Richmond, VA London, England 1815-1820 Returns to Richmond although travels constantly to Baltimore . 1821 Enlists in the army in Boston, Massachusetts 1827 Charleston, SC 1828 Fortress Monroe, VA 1829 Baltimore, Maryland 1831 Moves to Richmond with his family 1835 New York City 1837 Philadelphia, PA 1838 New York City, 1844 Returns to Richmond, VA 1849 Attempts to go to NYC, ends up in Baltimore and eventually dies, 1849
Poe’s Writing
Name the new genre Poe is accredited with creating.
Defective-fiction
Record some of the titles and dates of Poe’s work.
The Tell-Tale Heart 1843
The Cask of Amontillado 1846
The Raven 1845
The Masque of The Read 1850
The Fall of The House of Usher 1839
The Pit and the Pendulum 1843
The Purloined Letter 1845
Ligeia 1838
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar 1845
The Black Cat 1842
Important Women in Poe’s Life
List the important women in Poe’s life and when they died.
Although Poe never really had a proper social interaction, Eliza Hopkins Poe (his mother), affected him tremendously because of her premature death on December 8, 1811.
Frances Valentine Allan was the adoptive mother of Poe and also his first teacher. His relationship with him was very close but ended when Poe was only 20 years old on February 28th, 1829.
Maria Clemm, was the aunt, mother of Virginia Clemm Poe (his wife) and the mother in law of Poe lived with him and her daughter and represented an important figure in Poe’s and Virginia’s marriage. She died on February 16th, 1871.
Amanda Royster was believed to be Poe’s teen sweatheart when she was only 15, but Poe left for college. After she divorced from his first husband, she restarted the relationship with Poe, who had lost his wife, but could never get married because Poe died. She died on February 11th 1888.
Virginia Clemm Poe, was probably the most important woman in Poe’s life. She was Poe’s only wife but also his cousin. They married when she was only 13 and he was 27, this marriage only lasted for some years as she died of tuberculosis on January 30th, 1847.
Poe’s Relationship With His Father
Record examples that detail Poe’s relationship with his father.
Poe’s relationship with his fathe was described as volatile, mainly because both had strong ideas and were brutally independent. The biggest problem in their relation happened in 1827, when Poe was sent to college, the problem was that John Allan (Poe’s adoptive father) saw college as an expensive luxury so he the allowance that he gave to Poe was very short. This led Poe to gamble and eventually into having a large debt. After a brutally exchange of words, Allan decided not to pay his debts, making Poe to leave college and enrolled into the army (May 1827). He then wrote a letter to his father telling Allan that if he wanted to forget that Poe was his son he should tell Poe inmediatly.
Although no one knows exactly what was his dad’s anwer, Allan refused helping Poe in his career as a poet. Frances Allan (Poe’s mother) died, then John Allan re-married with a women that was not so nice with Poe, this drove him into becoming an alcholic
Poe’s Marriage
Record Poe’s wife’s name and details of who she was.
Poe’s wife was Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe and was born on August 15th, 1822 in the city of Baltimore, Maryland. She is also the cousin of Poe. They met just four months later he was discharged from the military in 1829. As an attempt to get Virginia closer and into a monogamous relationship, in 1835 he invited her to move to Richmon, Virginia where he would provide a house and money. Later that year, he returned to Baltimore and filed for a marriage license which was granted to him; Clemm, 13, and Poe, 27, had their official wedding ceremony on May 16th 1836. As an important fact, their relationship was always seen in a brother-sister relationship and many assured that Virginia died virgin.
She got sick of tuberculosis which ended her life on January 30th 1847.
Poe’s Financial Struggles
Record examples of Poe’s financial struggles.
Because of the little economical support that he received from his father during college, he had to quit college and join the army to sustent himself and pay his bills. After leaving the army, Poe did not received a regular salary and the ocassionall payments he did received were from literary conests. He was also not included in his father will, making his financial struggle bigger. Another factor that affected his economic wealth was the fact that he was alcoholic making work something harder to do, plus his wife (and also cousin) developed tuberculosis which requested a pricy treatment.
Poe’s Challenges With Employment
Record examples of the struggles Poe faced with employment.
There is no information about Poe having a stable job, he was constantly moving from city to city. Most of his temporal jobs were related to writing such as working in The Gentlemen’s Magazine, Graham’s Magazine, Saturday Evening Post, among others. Not only it was difficult to get a job because of his constant “movement” but also it was due to his alcoholism and addiction to gamble that made him incompetent to work as an average person. During his later years, Poe did not had an actual job but in fact received money from what his writing produced.
Other Interesting Facts
Record examples of other interesting facts or information from the timeline.
One of the most interesting facts about Edgar Allan Poe’s life is his death. There is nothing clear about his death, but rather there are several hypothesis regarding how he lost his life. The most known hypothesis is Poe leaving Richmond, Virginia for New York City on September 27, 1849; no one knew about him for about a week until (October 3) he abruptly appearead on a street of Baltimore, Maryland wearing clothes that were not his in a delirious state of mind. He was then taken to the Washington College Hospital were he died the morning of October 7. His most acclaimed poem, The Raven was sold to a New Yorker journal and for the small amount of 9 USD, although it mad him famous. Because of his bad relation with his “adoptive” family (he was never officialy adopted), the Allans, he never ever signed any of his works “Edgar Allan Poe”, he prefered to signed documents as Edgar A.
Poe or just E.A.P.
MAKING CONNECTIONS WITH THE FACTS
What were some of the tragic events Poe faced during his life? How do you think these may have influenced Poe's writing?
Edgar Allan Poe’s writing is consider to be “dark” commonly with a tragic plot, the reason of this is mostly because of his tragic childhood. Some of the events that may have influenced Poe’s writing was primarly the fact that by the time he was 2 years old he was an infant with a death mother and a father that had abandon him, but also the fact that he was “adopted” by a family, who’s patriachal figure did not got along with Poe might have affected him. In other words, not having biological parents, having an adoptive father that you don’t get a long, and then having an adoptive mother that you get a long but dies before Poe was 21, made the american author a very cold-minded person. In my opinion all of this events limited Poe in developing emotions and like most of the writers, he was just portraying his thoughts through his
poems.
It’s been told that the premature death of Poe’s wife, Virginia Clemm, had such an impact that he used the symbol/image of a dying young women as a motif , this can be seen in his poem The Raven.
Poe might have sometimes been described as opinionated, romantic, impractical, arrogant, ingenious, creative, intelligent and restless. Did you find examples in your research that would support these descriptions?
I feel that the letter Poe wrote to his adoptive father asking him to write respond if he “is still his son” was a bit arrogant or at least dramatic to say the least. Even though his relationship with his father was very bad, I thought that the letter was inncessary and it was a way in which Poe told his father “I’m very busy and have an important life, tell me if you want to join my (“awesome”) life so I don’t keep wasting my time. Also the only reason to write this letter was not only because he had a bad relationship with his father but because he had a strong opinion he thought he had to share, so I would say he was also opinionated. As far as the other words, I don’t have any other examples to support any, except that he was creative and he used it in the creation of his diverse literary works.
Do you think many of the themes of Poe's work can be explained by the events in his life?
They can be explained because most of his theme are related to something tragic, like several events in his life. An author’s personal experience affects not only his thoughts but also his writing. Poe’s tragic events such as the death of his mother, adoptive mother and even his wife/cousin (that counts double) shaped him as a person and made him write things related to death, hate, and misfortune. It’s important to mention that in order to be able to link the events in his life and Poe’s work, I should learn and read more about Poe’s reading.
Do you think Poe's frequent moves impacted his work? Explain.
I believe that they might have impacted his work because of the different societies in each town. Although I’m not a connoisseur of Poe’s work, I do believe that each of the cities he visited had a different society that might have influenced in Poe’s writing. Because several authors normally write poems, stories or novels about the society where they live, it’s very likely that depending on the society that Poe was living in he was going to write about a certain topic or theme. And moving frequently helped him encounter several opinions and ways of living that could easily impacted his work. Living in two different countries might have impacted in the language of some of his works just because the language used in England is different than the one used in the U.S.
Are you surprised that Poe didn't get along with his father? Explain.
No I’m not surpised at all, specially because it’s been said that bod persons were very independent and very strong-minded. Essentially, it’s two things that if you mix it will probably end in constant disagreement and may leed to fights. It’s also important to notice that Allan considered him as a self-made man, meaning that his expectancies on Poe were big; and all of this affected when not only Poe tells his father that he has a huge debt, but also when he tells him that he wants to be a writer (a job with a very bad salary). Basically the father’s expectancies, Poe’s different ideas (and alcoholism) and that both were stubborn, doesn’t surprises me that his relationship with his adoptive father was never good.
Poe was recognized as a skilled writer during his lifetime and yet he was often very poor. Do you think this would happen if Poe had lived today? Explain.
Absolutely; several talented writers that are even considered classics are not always appreciated by the general public. The problem is that skilled writers are not always popular while they live just because they do not necessarly write their books for a wide audience. Sadly this is also because the general public no longer read or know how to read appreciate good literature. But I wouldn’t be surprised that a skilled writer would later be “discovered” after his death, this happens because a lot of times the actual society is not culturally prepared for a specific literary work, so time has to pass. In the case of Poe, although he did not achieved a fortune he has developed a fame ever since his death to the point that his books are still sold at very, very high prices even though they can be legally acquired for free.
Do you think the time period Poe lived during is reflected in his writing? Explain.
Even though I do not know anything about Poe’s writing because I haven’t read it, I’m sure that the time period is always reflected in any author’s writing. The reason of this is because many writers critices or at least shows the society where they lived. According to the time period, is what (mosly) the theme is going to be. It’s very probable that Poe might reflect a relevant subject to his time period or show through his writing how people acted and thought. Any literary movements might had also afected some or all of his writings, specially on the structure and the language.