The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (Broché)

Biographie d'Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Poe was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston, the son of impoverished actors. Orphaned when he was not yet three, Poe was taken in by John and Frances Allan of Richmond, Virginia. After a major falling-out with his foster father in 1827, Poe left Richmond for Boston, where he arranged for the publication of his first book of poetry, Tamerlane and Other Poems. He published two additional books of poetry - Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems (1829) and Poems (1831) - and began to publish short stories and book reviews, gaining an editorial position at the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond in 1835 .
Perhaps already privately married to his thirteen-year-old cousin Virginia Clemm, he married her publicly in May 1836. By this time, he had begun work on his novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, early chapters of which were published in the Messenger of January and February 1837. But on January 3, 1837, Poe lost his job (very likely owing to his drinking), and he moved to New York City, where he completed the book.
Pym was published by Harper & Brothers on July 30, 1838. Poe had by then moved to Philadelphia, where he came to serve as an editor for two periodicals - Burton's Gentleman's Magazine and, later, Graham's Magazine - and where he published a collection of short stories, Tales of The Grotesque and Arabesque (1840), as well as many additional short stories, including the prize-winning "The Gold Bug" and the first modern detective story, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue." However, his wife, Virginia, developed tuberculosis.
Returning to New York City in 1844, Poe soon reached the peak of his fame with the publication of "The Raven" in 1845. That year also saw the publication of both Tales and The Raven and Other Poems - but Poe's drinking led to the failure of his weekly, the Broadway Journal. Settling in Fordham, Poe continued to write and to care for Virginia ; she died in January 1847. In his final years, Poe wrote some of his most celebrated poetry—"The Bells," "Eldorado", and "Annabel Lee" - and his cosmological prose poem, Eureka (1848).
On October 7, 1849, Edgar Allan Poe died in Baltimore.