The Poe(t)
Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809 as Edgar Poe. He was the second son of David and Elizabeth Arnold Poe, both whom were actors. In 1810, shortly after Poe’s birth his father deserted the family. The subsequent death of his twenty-four year old mother on December 8, 1811 in Richmond, Virginia, left Poe an orphan at the young age of three. After his mother’s death, John, a strict unemotional tobacco merchant, and Frances Allan, a weak woman due to health problems, took in Poe; his paternal grandparents took in his brother William Henry; and foster parents cared for his sister Rosalie.
Poe was educated with the Allan’s aid, in private academies, excelling in Latin, in writing verse, and declamation. However, despite his education, he was looked down upon and regarded as an outsider by the upper class of Richmond’s society; perhaps because the Allan’s never legally adopted Poe. Also, the culture of Richmond during Poe’s young adulthood did not regard actors in a high manner. This could have attributed to his reputation since his biological parents were actors.
The loss of his mother at an early age definitely affected Poe. “The angels, whispering to one another, Can find, among their burning terms of love, None so devotional as that of ‘Mother’” Poe wrote that in To My Mother. In Tamerlane, he not only wrote about his father, but he wrote about his mother as well; he had more respect for his mother than he did for his father. This respect can be found in “Tamerlane” because in it he speaks much nicer of his mother. For example, he writes, “O, she was worthy of all love! Love – as in infancy was mine – ‘Twas such as angel minds above Might envy; her young heart the shrine on which my every hope and thought.’” Tamerlane also shows Poe’s inner reflections of how he thought life with his mother might have been.
In 1831 Poe moved to Baltimore to