- [Voiceover] It was many and many a year ago in a kingdom by the sea that a maiden there lived, whom you may know by the name of Annabel Lee.

And this maiden she lived with no other thought than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child in this kingdom by the sea.

But we loved with a love that was more than love.

I and my Annabel Lee.

(gentle music) [Narrator] Edgar Allan Poe, one of America's most influential writers, was born on Thursday, the 19th of January, 1809 in a humble boarding house near Carver Street in Boston, Massachusetts.

Both of his parents were actors.

While on a business trip to Norfolk, Virginia, Poe's father David saw Eliza Arnold perform on stage, fell in love, and quickly joined her acting troop.

They soon married and would have three children.

Henry born in 1807, Edgar the middle child in 1809 and his sister Rosalie in 1810.

His mother, Eliza Poe, played an astonishing 300 roles in her brief career, often to excellent reviews.

One critic praised - [Critic] Her interesting figure her correct performance and the accuracy with which she always commits her part together with her sweetly melodious voice when she charms us with a song.

- [Narrator] His father, David Poe, was handsome but not nearly as talented as his wife.

He was often pilloried by theater critics.

One early review said: - [Reviewer] The lady was young and pretty and evinced talent both as singer and actress.

The gentleman was literally nothing.

- [Narrator] Another reviewer complained.

- [Reviewer] Mr. Poe mutilated some of his speeches in a most shameful manner.

- [Narrator] The young family traveled to theaters along the East coast, as most American cities were too small to support a permanent acting company.

But the Poe's lives soon began to unravel.

David Poe's acting career came to a halt with his final stage appearance in October, 1809.

Two years later, when Edgar was just two years old, David Poe deserted his young family and vanished.

Nothing is known of where he went or what became of him.

Five months later he died in Norfolk, Virginia.

- Well, David Poe probably had a few different reasons for abandoning his family.

First of all, his wife's career, Edgar's mother was taking off, she was getting better and better parts.

Meanwhile, you see David Poe getting fewer and fewer parts and lesser parts.

So might have been a little bit professional jealousy, but also the finances were really crumbling there.

He was having trouble supporting his growing family.

And about 1809, David Poe wrote a letter that said the worst thing in the world that could have happened to me has just occurred.

It's something so awful that he just doesn't want to keep living.

He's ready to give up acting altogether.

And that thing that had just happened was the birth of little Edgar Poe.

- [Narrator] Eliza was now in a very vulnerable position, having to raise three young children on her own, constantly moving from one theater to the next in a profession that lacked financial security.

Then tragedy struck.

She fell ill with the dreaded disease of the 19th century, tuberculosis and was left too weak to perform.

She gave her final performance in October, 1811.

The following month, managers of the Richmond Theater organized a benefit performance for Eliza with this urgent appeal in the local newspaper.

- [Voiceover] On this night, Mrs. Poe lingering on the bed of disease and surrounded by her children, asks your assistance and asks it for the last time.

- [Narrator] A week later, lying on her deathbed, she gives Edgar a miniature portrait of herself, several letters and a painting of Boston Harbor, inscribing on the back - [Eliza] For my little son Edgar, who should ever love Boston, the place of his birth and where his mother found her best and most sympathetic friends.

- [Narrator] On the 8th of December, Edgar's mother passes away from tuberculosis at just 24 years old.

Although she and her husband could not have known it, they die just three days apart.

Not yet three years old.

Edgar was now an orphan.

John and Francis Allan, who had no children of their own, took Edgar into their home in Richmond, Virginia.

Poe's foster father, John Allan was a merchant who traded in tobacco, wheat, and agricultural supplies.

He was described as impulsive and quick-tempered rather rough and uncultured in mind and manner.

His wife Francis was but often in poor health.

She and her sister Nancy, who lived with the Allans lavished attention on Edgar.

The Allans gave Edgar Poe his middle name.

He would be known to the world as Edgar Allan Poe.

Yet they never formally adopted him.

- Unlike his sister Rosalie who was adopted by the Mackenzie family, Poe was never adopted by the Allans and although he was relatively unconscious of that fact in his earliest years.

As he became older, he came to understand what that meant.

It meant that Allan had consciously decided not to give him the Allan name, not to give him any share of whatever fortune Allan would eventually accrue.

And the irony for Poe is that Allan did, in fact, by the time Poe was 16, become a very wealthy man.

For Poe's entire life, I think this was a sore spot.

He wrote many tales in which he imagines the murder of an older man.

And I can't help but think that that primal conflict with John Allan is at the very heart of it.

- Living with the Allans Edgar's life changed dramatically.

He was dressed in fine clothes, taken to fancy resorts and was described as "lovely little fellow with dark curls and brilliant eyes, charming everyone by his childish grace, by vivacity and cleverness."

He was sent to excellent schools and learned the ways of elegant society.

John Allan was said to have alternated in spoiling and scolding him.

On the 23rd of June, 1815, just five days after the Duke of Wellington defeated Napoleon in the Battle of Waterloo, John Allan and his family embarked on a 34-day ocean voyage to England to open a London branch of his mercantile business Allan and Ellis.

When Edgar was nine, he entered the Reverend Bran's manor house boarding school in the country village of Stoke Newington about four miles north of London.

When later asked about his famous pupil Bransby declared.

- [Bransby] I like to the boy, poor fellow, his parents spoiled him.

He was intelligent, wayward, and willful.

- [Narrator] Edgar later recalled his school days in England as lonely and unhappy.

Unfortunately, John Allan's business venture proved a failure.

He and his family returned to Richmond in the summer of 1820.

Having lived abroad for five years, when Edgar enters the academy run by Joseph Clark, he is more cosmopolitan than his peers.

During his three years there, Edgar studies mathematics and learns to read the classic Greek and Roman writers.

Clark later recalled.

- [Clark] He had a sensitive and tender heart in which strain every nerve to oblige a friend.

- At age 14, Edgar enters William Burke school.

In those days, such schools were usually private academies consisting of about 20 male students.

There he studies Greek and Latin, French and Italian, geography, and grammar.

So what was Edgar Allan Poe like as a boy?

One boyhood friend recall that Edgar liked practical jokes, masquerades and raiding orchards.

- The poets we think of the United States back then were lawyers or people with family money or their professors.

But Poe's great dream was to be a poet somehow.

His hero was a British Poet, Lord Byron, the guy dressed all in black with wild curly black hair, had love affairs all over Europe and Poe said "I wanna be that guy."

So he grew up acting like a young Lord Byron and sending love poetry to girls in his sister's school.

Apparently they really liked the poach until they found he'd send everybody the same poem.

- [Narrator] When 15 years old, he becomes famous for swimming six miles in the James River under a hot summer sun, part of the way against a strong tide.

- But for years afterwards, Poe was a local legend and even 10 years after the fact, there's an article about it in the Southern Literary Messenger Magazine here in town and Poe proudly boasted.

Yeah, that article's about me.

I'm the guy who set the record and still holds it.

And to this day post still holds record of swimming against the tides in the James River.

- [Narrator] As he grows older, Edgar becomes more withdrawn and isolated from his classmates.

In his later poem alone, Poe expresses how his feelings differed from those of his peers.

- [Voiceover] From childhood's hour, I have not been, as others were.

I have not seen as others saw, I could not bring my passions from a calm spring, From the same source, I have not taken my sorrow.

I could not awaken my heart to joy at the same tone and all I loved, I loved alone.

- [Narrator] While at the Burke Academy, Edgar grows very close to Jane Standard, the warm hearted 30-year-old mother of his friend and classmate Robert.

Whenever unhappy or having problems at home, Edgar found great comfort in her company.

- When the two of them met, there was a kind of immediate connection, almost mystical in the sense that there was something in Poe that yearned for someone like Jane Standard.

And there was really something in Jane Standard that was very appreciative of this sorrowful, melancholy boy who admired her so much.

And I think it was that recognition of what they had in common that led to a really intense and lasting friendship.

Lasting in the sense that Poe remembered Jane Standard his entire life.

- [Narrator] He was said to have loved her with all the affectionate devotion of a son.

However, Jane suffered from what we know today as major depression.

Edgar knew her for just one year in Richmond before she died around age 31, which greatly affected the young poet who often visited her grave with her son Robert.

Jane's untimely death made Edgar despondent.

- When he first met her, he almost fainted right at her feet.

Problem was he was his best friend's mother.

He was 14, it wouldn't have really worked out.

But poets like unrequited love, they like to worship somebody from afar.

But shortly after they met, she died.

- [Narrator] He later wrote a famous love lyric about her called "To Helen" Changing Jane to the classical figure, "Helen of Troy."

Comparing Jane to that ideal.

- [Voiceover] Helen, thy beauty is to me like those Nycean bark of yore.

The gently, o'er a perfum'd sea.

The weary wayworn wanderer bore to his own native shore.

On desperate seas long want to roam, thy highest hair, thy classic face, thy Naiad heirs have brought me home to the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo, In your brilliant window-niche, how statue-like I see thee stand the agate lamp within thy hand, Ah!

Psyche from the regions which are holy land.

- [Narrator] Around this time Edgar falls in love with 15-year-old Elmira Royster and the two secretly become engaged.

She later wrote about his melancholy.

- [Elmira] He was a beautiful boy, not very talkative when he did dark though he was pleasant, but his general manner was sad.

- [Narrator] The melancholic young poet began clashing with his quick tempered foster father who did not understand him and grew exasperated writing in a letter.

- [John] He does nothing and seems quite miserable, sulky and ill tempered to all the family.

I have given him a much superior education than ever I received myself.

The boy possesses not a spark of affection for us, not a particle of gratitude for my care and kindness taught him.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] In February 1826, Edgar enters the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, which had just opened the year before.

Thomas Jefferson, the first rector founded the university, designed its buildings and planned the curriculum.

Every Sunday he invited students to dine with him at Monticello and Poe very likely met him on various occasions.

Yet just five months after Poe enters the university, Jefferson dies on the 4th of July, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Jefferson wanted to model the university on principles of the enlightenment, but in reality it was a wild place.

Fights drinking and gambling were rampant and the college rules were ignored.

Between 1825 and 1850, only 10% of its students completed the three years and graduated.

Poe registered in the schools of ancient and modern languages, taking classes in Greek and Latin, French, Spanish and Italian.

If you ever felt nervous about taking a final exam, imagine being examined by two former US presidents including the father of the Constitution.

In December, 1826, Poe was examined for three hours by President James Madison who had succeeded Jefferson as director and President James Monroe.

Poe earned the highest honors in ancient and modern languages.

While he excelled academically, Poe struggled financially.

Although his foster father had inherited an enormous fortune from his uncle making him one of the richest men in Virginia, he gave Poe insufficient funds to meet his expenses.

So Poe turned to gambling to try to meet his costs.

The problem was he was an inept card player.

He lost an enormous sum of money, greatly worsening his financial situation.

John Allan refused to cover his debts and in December, Poe was forced to quit the university.

Even though he was only there for less than a year.

Poe's room at 13 West Range known as the Raven Room is preserved to this day.

Two centuries later, UVA students cannot reside in poses old room and it looks today much as it did when Poe live there.

When Edgar returned to Richmond, he worked without pay as a clerk in his foster father's counting house.

It was there he learned that Elmira Royster, the girl he was secretly engaged to was now engaged to someone else.

Her father had adamantly opposed her engagement with Edgar and had even intercepted his letters.

Poe was miserable.

After three months he could endure it no longer he decided to leave home and make his own way in the world.

He wrote John Allan.

- [Voiceover] Sir, my determination is at length taken to leave your house and endeavor to find some place in this wide world where I will be treated not as you have treated me.

I have heard you say when you little thought I was listening and therefore must have said it in earnest that you had no affection for me.

- [Narrator] Poe heads to Boston, his late mother's favorite city, cast out by his family and feeling adrift in the world with few prospects he enlists for five years in the army as a private under the pseudonym Edgar A. Perry presumably did dodge creditors.

In June, 1827, Poe self-publishes his first volume of poetry, "Tamerlane and Other Poems."

The work is published anonymously the author identifying himself only as a Bostonian, but it receives virtually no reviews or attention.

Only 50 copies are printed of which 12 have survived.

Amazingly, this 40 page pamphlet, completely ignored when published, has become the most valuable work in American literature.

He spends the first six months as a company clerk stationed at Fort Independence on Castle Island in Boston Harbor.

By all accounts, he adjusts quite well to military life.

After six months pose battery is ordered to Fort Moultrie on Sullivan's Island in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina.

- I think the army looked attractive to him so he joined the army and he achieved the rank of Sergeant Major.

He was the called an artificer.

He was the guy that created the gunpowder for the bombs for the cannon balls.

And that was a very dangerous but very important job because when you would shoot off the cannon towards the enemy, you wanted to make sure the cannon ball didn't explode in the cannon or on your side.

So he created the the the gunpowder mixture and to make sure that it went where it was supposed to go.

A very important job and he excelled in the army.

- [Narrator] Sullivan's island would be the setting for Poe's most popular short story, "The Gold Bug" in which a man and his servant hunt for buried treasure.

"The Gold Bug" directly influenced Robert Lewis Stevenson's "Treasure Island," four decades later.

Stevenson even credits Poe in his preface.

"The Gold Bug" also popularizes cryptography or secret writing as the character decodes a cypher to locate the treasure.

- Poe helped popularize the use of cryptograms in fiction.

And in his story "The Gold Bug" he has the character who finds a piece of parchment with nothing on it.

When he holds a reveals that written invisible ink, there's a code.

When he decodes the message, it gives him a series of clues has to follow to find a buried treasure.

So this is the plot of "Da Vinci Code," "National Treasure."

Even the "Goonies," it all goes back to "The Gold Bug" and it was a huge hit.

It was Poe's most popular story during his lifetime even adapted to a stage play while he was still alive and people thought he was a genius for creating this new kind of story.

Now cryptograms have been around for a long time, usually used by the military.

It was a great way to sneak messages across enemy lines and remember Poe was in the military so this is probably where he learned about cryptography.

- [Narrator] Later in his career, Poe wrote a wildly popular newspaper column, asking readers to send ciphers for him to decode.

Many readers enthusiastically sent him all kinds of ciphers, which Poe unfailingly solved and published the answers in his column.

William Friedman was widely considered the most preeminent cryptologist in US history, who broke the Japanese purple cipher that helped the allies to defeat Japan in World War II.

Friedman was introduced to cryptology by reading "The Gold Bug" as a boy.

- [William] It is a curious fact that popular interest in this country in the subject of cryptography, received its first stimulus from Edgar Allan Poe.

Should a psychological test be made, the word cipher would doubtless bring for most laymen the immediate response Poe or "The Gold Bug."

The fame of Poe rests not a little on his activities with cipher and much of the esteem in which this American genius is held today rests in part on the legend of Poe, the cryptographer.

- [Narrator] His wife Elizabeth Smith Friedman was also a brilliant cryptanalyst who successfully deciphered many enemy codes during both world wars saving countless lives.

She is considered one of the greatest cryptanalysts in American history.

Living on the dreary Sullivan Island for 18 months with poor pay and no chance of advancement to the officer rank, Poe realizes he is at a dead end and attempts to leave the army.

He eventually finds a substitute to fulfill his enlistment and leaves the army in April 1829 with an eye toward attending West Point.

- He decided that the army was not for him and he did what many people did in that time period.

You could buy your way out by finding someone who would take your place and you would pay that person some money to do that and that's what he did.

- [Narrator] When Edgar is just 20 years old, his beloved foster mother, Francis Allan, dies at age 44 after a lingering and painful illness.

She was the only source of genuine love and affection in his life to that point.

And she supported his artistic ambitions.

His sorrow for the death all those who loved him is reflected in his later poem.

"The Conqueror Worm" - [Voiceover] Out, out other, the lights, out all and over each quivering form.

The curtain of funeral pall, comes down with the rush of a storm and the angels all paled and won uprising.

Unveiling a firm that the play is the tragedy man and its hero, the conqueror worm.

(dramatic military music) - [Narrator] When most people think of Edgar Allan Poe, West Point is probably not the first thing that comes to mind, but in June, 1830, he arrives in upstate New York at the US Military Academy, which enforced a very strict code of conduct.

Cadets were forbidden to "drink, play cards or chess, gamble, use or possess tobacco, read novels, romances or pleases or bathe in the river."

The routine was daunting awake at sunrise, classes until four, military drills, followed by supper and then evening classes.

Yet Poe excels academically in his chosen fields of French and mathematics.

For a while Edgar thrives under that regime, just as he had under the discipline of army life.

His fellow cadets took delight in his mocking verses about their West Point instructors.

In spite of John Allan being one of the richest men in Virginia, thanks mostly to an inheritance, he barely supports Poe while at West Point, making life there even more difficult.

As Poe complained in a letter back home.

- [Voiceover] You sent me to West Point, like a beggar.

The same difficulties are threatening me as before at Charlottesville and I must resign.

- [Narrator] More painful was that John Allan remarries, starts another family and basically shuts Poe out of his life.

Feeling disillusioned, Poe decides to leave the academy.

He deliberately flouts the rules.

He skips classes, he disobeys orders, he fails to participate in the drills.

On the 28th of January, a general court martial is convened.

Edgar pleads guilty to all but one charge and declines to offer any defense.

He is found guilty on all charges and is dismissed from West Point.

- Poe was a great example of what Charles Baudelaire called poete maudit, the cursed poet, which Bauedelaire regarded as a kind of a privileged perspective on society precisely by being cast out, by being the stranger or by being the man of the crowd, the kind of the outsider who has a special insight into a social predicament.

And I think that Poe's own experience of really intense rejection and dispossession in a way was very important for the kind of poetic and literary perspective that he was so famous for, which is the perspective of the outsider.

- [Narrator] Set ad drift in the world, without direction, without career prospects, without close friends, and shut out by his foster family, Poe decides to relocate to Baltimore.

There where his cousins lived, he would seek a new life for himself.

In May, 1831 Poe moves to Baltimore, then America's second largest city, to live with his ailing grandmother, aunt Maria Clemm, his cousins Henry and Virginia and his older brother also named Henry.

His brother was an amateur sailor and by age 20 had sailed the world on the USS Macedonian, he was said to have shared Edgar's dreamy romanticism, morbid melancholy and weakness for liquor.

A published poet, an author he may have inspired Edgar to take up writing tales.

For a time Edgar used the alias Henri Le Rennet, A name inspired by Henry.

Sadly, just three months after Edgar moves to Baltimore, Henry who had been ill for some time dies from tuberculosis at 24 the same age as their mother.

He is buried under this bush in an unmarked grave in the family plot.

Around 1833, the family moves here to 3 Amity Street, a very modest two story row house and what was then the countryside.

The grandmother who was bedridden supported the household through her pension while her daughter Maria Clemm brought in funds through dressmaking.

But money was very tight.

It was not an easy existence.

In those days people could go to jail for being excessively in debt.

In 1832, half the prisoners in Baltimore city jail were insolvent debtors.

Edgar tried to find a teaching position but to no avail.

He wrote his foster father.

- [Voiceover] I am perishing, absolutely perishing for want of aid and yet I am not idol nor addicted to any vice.

Nor have I committed any offense against society which would render me deserving of so hard of fate.

For God's sake, pity me and save me from destruction.

- [Narrator] Maria Clemm, a widow, was an energetic and kindly woman who is completely devoted to Edgar and this would remain so throughout his life.

She believed in his genius and made significant sacrifices on his behalf.

She in effect, adopted Edgar as her own, acknowledging that he had become.

- [Maria] Indeed a son to me and has always been so.

- So Maria Clemm, for example, apparently was a very loving woman.

I mean she would take anyone into the household and she did.

She took Edgar into the household and she raised, I shouldn't say raised because he was basically an adult, but she treated him like her own son and they became very close.

He called her Muddy as a nickname and she called him Eddie.

And they were a very tight knit family and she supported him and did what she could to keep him happy, to promote him and to do everything she could to encourage his writing.

- [Narrator] Edgar also grew especially close to Virginia, his first cousin and served as her tutor.

- When Poe moves into this household, Maria Clemm's household in Baltimore and he meets Virginia, they soon become very fond of one another.

And this really is the first time that Poe really has a place because he's orphaned at a very young age.

His mother Eliza Poe dies.

He's taken in by the Allans but he doesn't fit into that world.

But this world he does fit into.

And so the three of them, Virginia Poe, Maria Clemm and Edgar Allan Poe kind of form this cohesive unit where he is at his happiest.

- [Narrator] It is in Baltimore that Poe launches his career as an imaginative short story writer, writing tales such as "Morella," "The Assignation," "Berenice," and his first science fiction story, "The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall."

But what made Poe turn to short story writing?

He may have been partly inspired by his older brother Henry's works and Poe had a keen understanding of what the public wanted.

Rising literacy rates, urbanization and technological advances in printing presses increased the public's appetite for stories.

- So Poe is in this transition time between the kind of the waning of the old rural America and the dawning of modern capitalistic commercial America.

And just like in Europe and during the Gutenberg's time when the printing presence invented, you have this kind of explosion of periodicals.

- [Narrator] Edgar's room was likely on the top floor.

This was where he wrote some of his earliest short stories, including "MS. Found in a Bottle," that is manuscript found in a bottle that wins a $50 prize in a literary contest given by the Baltimore Saturday visitor.

Published in 1833, this story launches Poe's literary career.

The award also offers Poe much needed validation that he had talent and could devote his life to his craft.

- For someone who is struggling and wondering, what am I doing?

Poetry, short stories, and to win win such a prestigious award, he must have thought, this is it.

This is what I want to do and yes, he probably thought I'm a good writer and this prize proves it.

Here are these reputable judges you know, telling me that you won the best story.

- [Narrator] "MS. Found in a Bottle" is a shipwreck story that begins... [VO] Of my country and my family, I have little to say, Ill usage and length of years have driven me from the one and estranged me from the other.

- [Narrator] Estranged from family and country.

The unnamed narrator embarks as a passenger on a cargo ship from Batavia.

Now Jakarta, Indonesia.

Days into the voyage, the ship is hit by a violent storm that capsizes the vessel and throws everyone overboard except the narrator and an old Swede.

- [Voiceover] In the next instant, a wilderness of foam hurled us upon our beam ends and rushing over us for and aft swept the entire decks from stern to stern.

By what miracle I escaped, destruction, it is impossible to say.

After a while I heard the voice of an old Swede who had shipped with us at the moment of our leaving port.

We soon discovered that we were the sole survivors of the accident.

- [Narrator] Driven south by the storm, the narrator ship collides with a gigantic black galleon and the narrator is thrown onto its rigging.

Once aboard, he hides, but soon discovers the aged crew is unable to see him.

- [VO] They all bore about them the marks of hoary old age.

Their voices were low tremulous and broken.

Their eyes glisten with the room of years and their gray hair streamed terribly in the tempest.

- [Narrator] The ship drifts toward Antarctica where it becomes caught in a vast whirlpool and goes down.

In March 1834, Edgar's Foster father passes away in Richmond, a very wealthy man.

He owned eight houses with shares in gold mines and banks.

But Edgar does not receive 1 cent.

The following year Poe luck finally turns through a mutual friend.

He is introduced to Thomas Willis White, the owner and editor of the Southern Literary Messenger.

A monthly magazine published in Richmond.

Poe's soon submits short stories, poems, and reviews that White publishes in the Messenger.

White is somewhat taken aback by the bizarre nature of some of Poe's tales.

Edgar writes him.

- [Edgar] But whether the articles of which I speak are or are not in bad taste is little to the purpose.

To be appreciated, you must be read and these things are invariably sought after with avidity.

- [Narrator] White is impressed with poses writing and advice as to how to grow the magazine and offers him a position.

In early August, 1835, Poe decamp to Richmond to launch a new chapter in his literary career.

(gentle music) Poe returns to Richmond to work on the southern literary messenger.

He proofreads articles, manages the correspondence and writes the critical notes, all for a modest $15 per week.

He soon becomes lonely in Richmond, separated from Maria Clemm and her daughter Virginia, he receives word that his wealthy cousin Nielsen Poe invited Virginia to live with him and his family.

Nielsen offered to educate Virginia, give her a comfortable life and be her guardian.

He writes a deeply personal letter, imploring them to rebuff Nielsen's offer.

- [Voiceover] My dearest auntie, I am blinded with tears while writing this letter.

I have no wish to live another hour, amid sorrow and the deepest anxiety your letter reached and you well know how little I am able to bear up under the pressure of grief.

My last, my only hold on life is cruelly torn away.

I have no desire to live and will not.

I love, you know I love Virginia, passionately, devotedly.

I cannot express in words the fervent devotion I feel towards my dear little cousin, my own darling.

It is useless to disguise the truth that when Virginia goes with Nielsen Poe that I shall never behold her again.

That is absolutely sure.

Pity me my dear auntie.

Pity me.

I have no one now to fly to.

I am among strangers and my wretchedness is more than I can bear for Virginia.

My love, my own sweetest sissy, my darling little wifey, think well before you break the heart of your cousin Eddie.

- Moved moved by his pleas, the Clemm sacrifice material prospects, and soon moved to Richmond.

In the fall of 1835, Edgar, Maria and Virginia live together in a boarding house on Capitol Square.

In December, Poe becomes editor of the Southern Literary Messenger.

If Baltimore was where Poe became a short story writer, Richmond was where he became a magazine editor and critic.

He soon achieved fame or infamy for his cutting, but insightful literary reviews.

Most critics in Poe's day engaged in what was called puffing.

They would lavish praise on mediocre literary works when they hardly deserved it.

Part of the reason was to establish America, not just Europe as a home of great writers.

But Poe refused to go along.

He announced it his mission to reform the national habit of cuddling mediocre American writers.

- [Voiceover] In fact, we are now strong enough in our own resources.

We have at length arrived at that epoch when our literature may and must stand on its own merits or fall through its own defects.

- Poe was fundamentally and temperamentally against the practice of puffing.

He was critical of those who puffed so flagrantly and made fun of them in many ways.

And I think yes indeed, he went out of his way to to make the case that if American literature was going to attain any respectability in the world, Americans had to establish some critical standards and that puffery was the antithesis of that.

[Narrator] And he didn't mince his words writing his reviews on this desk he called the work ups and downs, - [Voiceover] A public imposition.

It should have been printed among the quack advertisements.

- [Narrator] About the novel the Swiss Heiress, Poe declared it.. - [Voiceover] Should be read by all who have nothing better to do.

- [Narrator] He wrote of the work Paul Eurich, - [Voiceover] Such all the works which bring daily discredit upon our national literature.

- [Narrator] More outspoken and honest and some would say reckless than any other critic.

He soon earns the nickname, the Tomahawk man for his biting reviews.

But there were two writers who Poe consistently praised Alfred Lord Tennyson, whom he called a magnificent genius and Samuel Coleridge.

While working for the Messenger, Poe publishes 37 reviews of American and foreign books and periodicals establishing his place as a premier critic in the United States.

(gentle music) Back home Edgar grew closer to Virginia, an attractive girl with a very sweet and gentle disposition.

One friend noted.

- [Friend] He devoted a large part of his salary to Virginia's education and she was instructed in every elegant accomplishment at his expense.

He himself became her tutor at another time.

I remember once finding him engaged on a certain Sunday in giving Virginia lessons in algebra.

Everyone who saw her was won by her.

Poe, was very proud and very fond of her and used to delight in the round childlike face and plump little figure.

And she in turn idolized him.

She had a voice of wonderful sweetness and was an exquisite singer and in some of their more prosperous days, she had her harp and piano.

[Friend 2] At home, the character of Edgar Poe appeared in its most beautiful light, playful, affectionate, witty for all who came a kind word, a pleasant smile, a graceful and courteous attention.

- And they would say they never solved so much love in that small household between Edgar and Virginia.

He would dote on her, she would dote on him, and so much love in that household and there's no doubt in anyone's mind that they were truly devoted to each other.

- [Narrator] On the 16th of May, 1836, the 27-year-old Poe married his cousin Virginia in a simple ceremony at their boarding house.

Virginia was only 13 years old but was presented as 21 on their marriage certificate.

The couples spend their honeymoon in Petersburg, Virginia staying on the second floor of this house.

- His nickname for her was Sissy.

He thought of her like a little kid's sister.

There's one letter he writes, calls her my little sissy, my darling cousin, and my little wifey.

So at first it probably was a platonic marriage.

It was maybe a marriage out of convenience, maybe something that the mother-in-law had something to do with arranging, although he genuinely adored her, maybe at first as a kid's sister.

And when she did get older, he made that sure that she had piano instructors.

Even a harp instructor made sure that she had tutors.

She apparently was very excellent at speaking Italian, so it seems like a seemingly happy home life even though they always struggled with poverty.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Poe had a penchant for self-destruction, which soon began to emerge.

He would strive intensely for a desired goal and just when it was in reach, he would destroy his own chance of achieving it.

Often through self-destructive drinking or turning friends into enemies.

- It's a terrifically revealing motif in Poe, because it's fundamentally rooted in his own life experience of being an orphan, of having the experience of being rejected or abandoned by a parent.

And then going through the process again with John Allan being pushed away, refused a place in the family.

And I think for Poe, this kind of, and for really any young person who experiences similar kinds of loss and abandonment, this can very easily create feelings of worthlessness, of self-hatred.

- [Narrator] This impulse for self-sabotage was present throughout pose life and is a theme in several of his short stories.

In a story titled "The Imp of the Perverse," Poe tackles this theme head on.

- [Voiceover] We stand upon the brink of a precipice.

We peer into the abyss, we grow sick and dizzy.

Our first impulse is to shrink from the danger.

Unaccountably we remain a thought one which chills the very marrow of our bones with the fierceness of the delight of its horror.

It is merely the idea of what would be our sensations during the sweeping precipitancy of a fall from such a hide, examine these similar actions.

We shall find them resulting solely from the spirit of the perverse.

We perpetuate them merely because we feel that we should not.

- [Narrator] In the story, "The Black Cat," the narrator also experiences "The Imp of the Perverse" - [Voiceover] Pluto, this was the cat's name was my favorite pet and playmate, I alone fed him and he attended me whenever I went about the house, it was even with difficulty that I could prevent him from following me through the streets.

Our friendship lasted in this manner for several years during which my general temperament and character through the instrumentality of the fiend and temperance had I blush to confess it.

Experienced a radical alteration for the worse.

I grew day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others, and then came as if to my final and irrevocable overthrow the spirit of perverseness.

Of this spirit philosophy takes no account yet I am not more sure that my soul lives than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart.

Who has not a hundred times found himself committing a vile or a silly action for no other than because he knows he should not.

This spirit of perverseness I say, came to my final overthrow.

One morning in cold blood I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree, hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes and with the bitters remorse at my heart.

- I think Poe in the 1830s is already doing what would take much, much longer to be recognized as stream of consciousness writing in the 20th century with Joyce or Woolf or even back in the late 19th century with Dostoevsky, Poe was is a very important kind of under acknowledged precursor for all of this experimentation where mental associations themselves become the the the object of representation in a way.

So a lot of his crazy narrators who are so swept up in their own kind of mental preoccupations artistically that was very experimental for Poe to be focusing on.

- [Narrator] Perhaps weighed down by heavy financial burdens and an overbearing owner Poe's own "Imp of the Perverse" emerges and he begins to self destructively drink.

- Well, Poe had an extreme intolerance of alcohol.

They say that after a glass of wine, he gets staggering drunk.

It seems to be a hereditary problem because his sister, they say after just a thimble full of whiskey, she was staggering, drunk, be sick for days afterwards.

The Poe family seems to have had some kind of hereditary intolerance of alcohol, which they describe as a family curse.

They didn't really have a word for alcoholism back then, really understand the concept.

But Poe's friends said that sure, if he'd go to a party, he'd try to avoid the alcohol.

But if he just had a single drink, he became a completely different person.

He'd embarrass himself, he'd alienate friends, and then he'd be just sick for days afterwards.

So Poe stayed away from alcohol for months at his time, his employers, his wife and mother-in-law all encouraged him to stay away from drinking because that's when he is productive.

When he is clean and sober, he was able to write thousands of words, but when he had something to drink, he was bedridden.

- [Narrator] As Poe begins drinking again, many arguments ensue with his boss.

White soon dismisses him from the Messenger.

Poe likely had mixed feelings leaving the magazine.

He resolved to make a brand new start of it in the upcoming year.

He would move his family to the largest city in America.

(gentle music) In early 1837, Poe moves his family to New York where they take up quarters near Washington Square, but their timing could not be worse.

In May, as Queen Victoria ascends to the throne in England, The Great Panic of 1837 begins leading to one of the worst depressions in American history.

Work was very difficult to find.

The family had to survive on pose occasional publications and taking in borders.

The family was destitute, often living on bread and molasses for weeks at a time.

Yet they seemed happy to outsiders as they were a very close knit trio.

It was at this time, Edgar falls ill and is treated at the nearby northern dispensary, unwavering place in Greenwich Village.

The building still stands today.

While in New York, Poe completes his only finished novel, "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket," about a young man who stows away aboard a wailing ship called the Grandpas.

He experiences myriad adventures and misadventures, mutiny shipwreck and cannibalism among them before the crew of another ship rescues him.

- It's a very interesting tale.

It's inspired by Poe's brother Henry who had been a sailor and had traveled, kind of traveled the world and Poe Henry's story kinda inspired this and Poe own of course, creative genius.

- [Narrator] Starting out as a somewhat conventional adventure at sea, the novel becomes increasingly strange and difficult to classify with one credit, calling it, "one of the most elusive major texts of American literature."

The novel addresses one of Poe's recurring themes, man's unconscious desire for destruction.

To lend authenticity to this tale, Poe draws from contemporary travel journals and real life accounts of sea voyages as well as his own experiences at sea.

Critics generally dislike the work finding it disjointed.

Poe himself later disavowed calling it "a very silly book."

Still the novel has made somewhat of a comeback.

In 2013, the UK guardian cited it as the 10th best novel written in English.

The novel later influenced Herman Melville's, whaling epic, "Moby Dick."

- I agree with Melville that failures can be great works of of art and I think in this narrative, Poe achieved more than he expected to and the effects that he creates continue to entice us into this very tangled narrative that seems to operate on so many different levels.

[Narrator] Unfortunately, economic conditions do not improve and in the summer of 1838, Poe is forced to move his family to Philadelphia, then the publishing capital of the country to seek better opportunities.

It is here that he will enter the most productive and brilliant period of his literary career.

(bell chiming) After moving to Philadelphia, Poe finds work as an assistant editor with Burton's Gentleman's Magazine.

William Burton was an actor often away on tour and needed someone to run the magazine he owned.

Burton offers to pay Poe a woeful $10 per week for what he claims will be two hours of work per day.

Of course the actual editorial job takes far longer and Poe is exploited.

Burton also disapproves of Poe's biting literary views and does not permit him to edit the magazine.

Needless to say, Poe is quite unhappy with the arrangement.

It is during this time that he pens one of his most mysterious and brilliant short stories.

"The Fall of the House of Usher."

The tale opens with the narrator approaching the house of Usher on horseback, feeling the weight of the mansion's gloominess.

- [Voiceover] During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone on horseback through a singularly dreary tract of country and at length found myself as the shades of the evening drew on within view of the melancholy house of Usher.

I know not how it was, but with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable, gloom, pervaded my spirit.

- [Narrator] One theme the story explores is how the fate of the crumbling mansion with its eye like windows and dower landscape is intertwined with the two troubled proprietors residing in it.

The narrator had recently received a letter from his friend, Roderick Usher, complaining of an illness and finds him in an oppressed state.

- [Voiceover] I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow.

An air of stern, deep and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all.

He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses.

The most insipid food was alone in durable.

The odors of all flowers were oppressive.

His eyes were tortured by even a faint light and there were but peculiar sounds.

And these from stringed instruments which did not inspire him with horror to an anomalous species of terror I found him abound in slave.

"I shall perish," said he, "I must perish in this deplorable folly."

- [Narrator] As depicted in a 1928 avant-garde silent film, Roderick believes it is the family mansion that is the main cause of his malady and that of his twin sister and only companion Lady Madeline, who is also gravely ill. - [Voiceover] He was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted and wince.

For many years.

He had never ventured forth an influence which some peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family mansion obtained over his spirit.

An effect which the physique of the gray walls and turrets and of the dim tarn into which they all looked down, had at length, brought about upon the morale of his existence.

- [Narrator] The narrator tries to lift his friend's morale by listening to improvised musical compositions on the guitar.

But Roderick reveals that he believes the family mansion to be alive and their fate tragically intertwined.

- [Voiceover] The belief, however, was connected with the gray stones of the home of his forefathers.

"The evidence of the sentient was to be seen," he said, "in the gradual yet certain condensation of an atmosphere of their own about the waters and the walls.

The result was discoverable," he added, "in that silent yet unfortunate and terrible influence, which for centuries had molded the destinies of his family and which made him what I now saw him, what he was."

- [Narrator] When Roderick and his sister perish.

This also brings about the mansion's destruction as if their fates are bound together.

- [Voiceover] From that chamber and from that mansion, I fled, aghast.

The storm was still abroad in all its wrath.

There came a fierce breath of the whirlwind.

The entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight, my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing the sunder.

It was a long, tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters.

And the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed solidly and silently over the fragments of the house of Usher.

- While "The Fall of the House of Usher" is a tour de force of Poe's ideas of unity, of effect, and it's also a mirror image in itself.

The whole story is about mirroring and Poe wrote it in what's called a chiastic pattern.

The beginning and the end reflect each other.

Even the internal parts reflect each other.

So for instance, the beginning of the story starts out as they're approaching the house of usher.

They see its reflection in the Tarn, so the house itself is reflected.

The story ends with them leaving the house of Usher and looking at it as it collapses into the Tarn.

So begins and ends at exactly the same place, but also within the story, we meet Madeline and Roderick Usher who are twins.

They live in a house with two eye like windows, copies of each other.

The house itself copied it and its reflection.

So it's all about mirroring.

It's all about doubles.

Are these actually twins or are they mirrors of the same person, the same personality.

- Another major theme in Poe's work is buried secrets do not stay buried.

Hidden secrets erupting to the surface is the theme of "The Tell-Tale Heart," also written in Philadelphia.

The story begins with a narrator revealing his madness as he attempts to deny it.

- [Voiceover] True nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous.

I had been an am, but why will you say that I am mad?

The disease had sharpened by senses, not destroyed, not dulled them.

Above all was the sense of hearing acute.

- [Narrator] The mad narrator describes his obsession in killing the old man.

As conveyed in this 1928 experimental silent film.

[Voiceover] It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain, but once conceived, it haunted me day and night.

I loved the old man.

He had never wronged me.

He had never given me insult for his gold.

I had no desire.

Ah, I think it was his eye.

Yes, it was this.

He had the eye of a vulture, a pale blue eye with a film over it.

Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold.

And so by degrees very gradually I made up my mind to take the life of the old man and thus rid myself of the eye forever.

- [Narrator] The narrator describes how he murders and buries the old man under the floorboards.

But when police officers arrived to search his home, he cannot hide his crime.

So tormented is he by the increasingly loud sounds in his ears of a beating heart.

- [Narrator] No doubt.

Now I grew very pale, but I talked more fluently and with a heightened voice.

Yet the sound increased and what could I do?

It was a low, dull, quick sound.

Much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton.

I gasped for breath, but the noise steadily increased.

I arose and argued about trifles in a high key with violent gesticulations, but the noise steadily increased.

Why would they not be gone?

Oh God, what could I do?

I phoned, I raved.

I swore, villains.

I shrieked assemble no more.

I admit the deed.

Tear up the planks.

Here, here it is the beating of his hideous heart.

- Poe's Narrator may be showing us a certain situation or scenario, but the real subject of the tale in a way is the the narrator's perspective itself.

So that focus on the narrator's perspective or point of view will go into in the 20th century stream of consciousness writers like Joyce, where the thought process is the interesting thing.

- "The Tell-Tale Heart" was one of the most extraordinary stories that Poe ever wrote, and it really sets him apart in many ways.

It was not the first story in which Poe used an unreliable narrator, but it's probably the most spectacular.

If we think about the way that horror stories now are related through cameras and film.

It's a story that's told from the point of view of the killer and we see closing in on the victim.

The viewer is seen from the killer's perspective.

(gentle music) [Narrator] Although mainly remembered as an author and poet, Poe was also a highly influential critic.

He was the first American writer to produce important literary criticism.

His literary theories on what makes the short story or prose tale effective and powerful help shape the conventions of the emerging genre.

The most important of these theories was what he called unity of effect.

- So the unity of effect is drawn from Poe's work "The Philosophy of Composition" where he says that all the components in the story should lead into this one effect, whether it's melancholy in his poems or horror in his stories.

- [Narrator] But this unity of effect can only be achieved if the work can be read in one sitting or else the effect is lost.

- [Voiceover] In the brief tale, the author is enabled to carry out the fullness of his intention, be what it may.

During the hour of perusal, the soul of the reader is at the writer's control.

There are no external or extrinsic influences resulting from weariness or interruption.

- [Narrator] And he emphasized the importance of the opening sentence and every word in the tale in contributing to the unity of effect.

- [Voiceover] If his very initial sentence tend not to the out bringing of this effect, then he has failed.

In his first step in the whole composition, there should be no word written of which the tendency is not to the one pre-established design.

And by such means with care and skill, a picture is at length painted, which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it with a kindred art, a sense of the fullest satisfaction.

- [Narrator] In his renowned critical essay, "The Philosophy of Composition" Poe reveals that he begins with a consideration of an effect.

- [Voiceover] Keeping originality always in view.

I say to myself in the first place of the innumerable effects or impressions of which the heart, the intellect, or the soul is susceptible, what one shall I on the present occasion select.

- [Narrator] Once selected, the intended effect influences not only the story's plot, but also its tone and mood.

In fact, Poe's suggested authors not put pen to paper until the overall effect is determined.

- There are so many writers today who have been influenced by Poe directly or indirectly that it's almost hard to see how pervasive that impact has been, but Poe was one of the first to recognize that from a technical perspective, a great short story is harder to write than a great novel because the lines on the court are much tighter.

You have to be very precise.

You have to know exactly what you're doing from the get go.

Whereas as Poe knew from writing "Arthur Gordon Pym," you kind of figure it out as you go.

- Meanwhile, things were going poorly at Burton's Magazine.

Poe is understandably resentful that although the magazine was bringing in $4,000 a year, he earned but a small fraction of it.

Despite doing most of the work even worse, he felt Burton mistreated him.

Poe's lifelong ambition, which he had since his days in Baltimore years before, was to establish his own literary magazine that would publish outstanding literature and raise the literary standards in America.

He also craved the freedom to speak his mind and gain financial security.

Sensing an opportunity, Poe draws up a prospectus for his proposed Penn Magazine to attract financial backers.

But when Burton finds out, he fires Poe on the spot.

Unfortunately, Poe falls very ill during this time.

He cannot find financial backers and is forced to put his dream on hold.

(bell chiming) Around the time William Henry Harrison is inaugurated as President of the United States in 1841, Poe begins work as editor of Graham's Magazine owned by the Philadelphia lawyer and publisher George Graham.

While Harrison is only president for 30 days before succumbing to pneumonia, Poe's employment at Graham's Magazine lasts a little longer.

He receives $800 per year and enjoys far better working conditions.

It was at this time that Poe writes a story that changes the history of world literature, a story whose impact is still widely felt in novels, movies, and television to this day.

(upbeat music) In the April 1841 issue of Graham's Magazine, appeared Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" inaugurating one of the most popular genres ever conceived, the detective story.

The word detective, did not yet exist in English.

So Poe called these stories, tales of ratiocination, nothing like this had ever been written before in literature.

- The first thing he did was publish "The Murders in the Rue Morgue."

A new kind of story about a character who solves impossible crimes.

In this case, two women who have been murdered inside a locked room that's still locked from the inside.

When the door's broken down, no murder is there.

How could he have murdered both these women in such a brutal fashion as to shove one of them up the chimney and nobody's seen him?

Is it supernatural?

Was it a ghost?

Well, Poe has a character, a private investigator, Auguste Dupin, who's able to solve the crime using reason and analysis, studying the crime scene, profiling the suspect, and this became the first detective story.

A whole new literary genre.

Poe became the first American to invent a new literary genre.

- [Voiceover] Residing in Paris during the spring and part of the summer of 18- I there became acquainted with the Monseieur C. Auguste Dupin.

Our first meeting was at an obscure library in the room Montmartre where the accident of our both being in search of the same very rare and very remarkable volume, brought us into closer communion.

We saw each other again and again.

I was astonished at the vast extent of his reading.

And above all, I felt my soul in kindled within me by the wild fervor and the vivid freshness of his imagination, it was at length arranged that we should live together during my stay in the city, our seclusion was perfect.

We admitted no visitors.

Indeed, the locality of our retirement had been kept a secret from my own former associates, and it had been many years since Dupin had ceased to know or be known in Paris.

We existed within ourselves alone.

Then we sallied forth into the streets, arm in arm, continuing the topics of the day, or roaming far and wide until a late hour seeking amid the wild lights and shadows of the popular city.

That infinity of mental excitement, which quiet observation can't afford.

- [Narrator] Their seclusion is broken.

When they read a newspaper account of a baffling double murder.

A mother and daughter have been found dead at their residence in the Rue Morgue, the mother was found with broken bones and her throat deeply cut while the daughter was found strangled to death and stuffed upside down in a chimney.

The murders occurred in a fourth floor apartment that was locked from the inside.

Like Dupin and the narrator, the women lived in an extremely retired lake, seeing almost no one.

Several witnesses reported hearing two voices at the time of the murder.

The first voice spoke French, but they could not identify the language of the second shrill voice.

The police are mystified.

After visiting the crime scene, Dupin ingeniously deduces how the two women were killed.

Poe's story establishes certain attributes of the detective genre that many authors later follow, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle with "Sherlock Holmes" and Agatha Christi with "Hercule Poirot": the detective as a detached, gentlemanly amateur, not associated with the police; the use of first person narrator, who is a friend of the detective such as Dr. Watson for Sherlock Holmes or Archie Goodwin for Nero Wolfe.

The opening intrusion of the outside world on the detective's bachelor office or corridors such as 221 B Baker Street in London.

And using the powers of reason, the detective revealing how the crime was committed.

So indebted to Poe was Conan Doyle that he wrote.

"Where was the detective story until Poe breathed the breath of life into it?"

Doyle also called Poe's detective stories, "a model for all time."

In fact, in Doyle's very first novel, "A Study in Scarlet," Watson remarks to Sherlock Holmes, - [Doyle] You remind me of Edgar Allan Poe's Dupin.

I had no idea that such individuals did exist outside of stories.

- [Narrator] But what may account for the detective novel being conceived at this particular time.

- It's a confluence or a convergence of cultural factors.

One of them is the growth of cities, the creation of urban cultures, the fascination with urban types.

Baudelaire became fascinated with the flaneur, the city walker, somebody who studies people in the streets.

This is also historically, the time at which many of the great cities of the world began to found police forces.

- [Narrator] Poe soon wrote a sequel, "The Mystery of Marie Roget," in which C. Auguste Dupin returns to solve the murder of a Parisian girl whose body was found floating in the sun.

He closely based this tale on a real life sensational case of the time, the slaying of Mary Rogers, a beautiful 20-year-old cigar girl in New York whose body was found floating in the Hudson River.

Although not as well received, this was the first detective story based on a real true crime.

Many television series, including the long running program, "Law and Order" with its adapted from the headlines format follow in the tradition pioneered by Poe.

Poe considered his third and final tale of ratiocination, "The Purloined Letter" to be his best.

In this story, the detective C. Auguste Dupin and the narrator are secluded in their Parisian quarters discussing famous cases.

When a prefect of the police visits, he requests their assistance in recovering a letter from the French queen stolen by one of her ministers.

The police cannot locate the stolen letter that contains information damaging to her reputation.

But Dupin ingeniously solves the case, discovering the stolen letter hiding in plain sight at the minister's residence.

In this story, Dupin smokes a pipe, an attribute that Conan Doyle adopts for "Sherlock Holmes," and Poe develops the rapport between Dupin and his friend that would be echoed in many detective partnerships through the years.

With these three tales of ratiocination, Poe firmly establishes the conventions of the detective story.

Although he could not have known it at the time, his place in literary history was assured.

At home, Poe tutored Virginia in languages in algebra and provided her a harp and piano.

He often encouraged her to sing, which she loved to do.

Visitors observed that she was an excellent singer.

Poe had reached the peak of his literary powers.

He made many friends in Philadelphia and participated in prominent literary salons.

He also found refuge in a happy home life and great joy with Virginia.

Yet life as he knew it was about to radically change.

(gentle music) (bright piano music)