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Edgar Poe was born in Boston to Elizabeth Arnold Poe and David Poe, Jr., both traveling actors. The couple already had one son named Henry. -
Poe's sister Rosalie was born. Shortly after her birth, or possibly even before it, David Poe deserts the family, leaving Poe's mother alone with three children. Making matters worse, Elizabeth Poe soon falls ill with tuberculosis. -
Elizabeth Arnold Poe dies of tuberculosis in Richmond, Virginia. Within days, David Poe also dies of tuberculosis. A Richmond couple, John and Frances Allan, take in Edgar as a foster child. -
The Allan family sails to London, where Edgar enrolls in school. -
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Five years after leaving America for England, the Allans return to Richmond, Virginia. -
A fifteen-year-old Edgar Allan Poe pens his first known poem: "Last night, with many cares & toils oppres'd,/ Weary, I laid me on a couch to rest." -
Poe enrolls midway through the academic year at the University of Virginia, which had opened less than a year before. -
Poe enlists in the U.S. Army under the name "Edgar A. Perry." Shortly after, his first book is published. The author is listed only as "A Bostonian". -
Poe's foster mother, Frances Allan dies in Richmond. Poe obtains leave to travel to her funeral. -
Poe is appointed to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. A few months later he publishes his second book of poetry, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems. -
Edgar's older brother Henry dies of either tuberculosis or cholera at the age of 27. -
Poe (now 27 years old) marries his thirteen-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm, at a ceremony in Richmond, Virginia. -
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Poe moves his new wife and mother-in-law to New York and then to Philadelphia. -
Poe's first novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, is published. -
Poe's story collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque is published in two volumes. -
Poe begins delivering lectures on poetry. He is a popular lecturer, frequently speaking to packed audiences. -
Poe, his wife, and her mother move to New York City, where he gets a job at the New York Evening Mirror. -
Poe publishes the poem, The Raven, in the New York Evening Mirror. It is wildly successful, bringing the writer the fame and fortune that have long eluded him. He soon becomes editor and owner of a magazine called the Broadway Journal. -
Poe's wife Virginia dies of tuberculosis at their home in the Bronx. Poe has been so despondent during the final months of her illness that friends thought he was going insane. The loss of his wife sends Poe into a downward spiral of alcoholism. -
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Poe travels to Richmond and convinces his childhood sweetheart, Elmira Royster Shelton, to become his fiancée. He joins the Sons of Temperance, an organization that forbids drinking (sort of like a nineteenth-century equivalent of Alcoholics Anonymous). The next month, Poe travels to Baltimore. -
After being found unconscious in a Baltimore gutter, Edgar Allan Poe is taken to the hospital and pronounced dead of causes still unknown. He is buried at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Baltimore.