POE
POE
university, Cleveland, Ohio, 1852-53; of mathe-
matics in the state normal school, Albany, N.Y.,
1853-55, and of physics and engineering at the
Normal school, Trenton, N.J., 1857-59; of physi-
cal science in the Brooklyn Polytechnic institute,
1863-69; of physics and engineering at Cooper
Union, New York city, 1869-79, and became
director of the Cooper Union night school in
1879. He was chief engineer of the water board
of Bergen, N.J., and was appointed commissioner
to supervise the construction of electrical sub-
ways in Brooklyn, N.Y. He was twice married;
first on Dec. 17, 1855, to Delia M., daughter of
Thomas Bussey of Troy, N.Y., and secondly, July
3 J, 1861, to Helen M. Bussey, her sister. The
honorary degree of A.M. was conferred on him
by Hamilton college in 1854 and that of M.D. by
Long Island College hospital. He edited Van
Nostrand's Engineering Magazine (1870-86), and
is the author of: TJie Blowpipe, a Guide to its Use
in the Determination of Salts and Minerals (1858);
A Translation of Jannettaz' s '• Guide to the Deter-
mination of Rocks" (1877); The Star Finder or
Planisphere with a Movable Horizon (1878); The
Aerinoid, and How to Use it (1880).
POE, Edgar Allan, author, was born in Boston, Mass., Jan. 19, 1809; son of David and Elizabeth (Arnold) Poe. His grandfather, David Poe, fought in the Revolutionary and 1812 wars, and his father, who had been educated for the law, had become an actor, married an actress, and was playing in Boston, when Edgar Allan, his second son, was born. His parents died when lie was but two years old, and John Allan, a wealthy merchant of Richmond, adopted him. He at- tended school at Stoke Newington, England, and a private school in Richmond, Va., and entered
the Univer- sity of Vir- ginia, Feb, 14, 1826. He re- mained there but one year, worked in Mr. Allan's count- ing-room a months, and in 1827 went to Bos- ton, where, at the age of eighteen, he l)ublished his Jirst volume of poems,
wliich he later attempted to destroy. "When his money was gone, he en- listed in the army. May 6, 1828, as Edgar A.
%.
u
Perry. He was advanced from private to the
rank of sergeant-major in less than nine months,
and when Mr. Allan learned where he was
he furnished a substitute and had Poe appointed
to the U. S. Military academy, July 1, 1830.
Poe found the life distasteful to him, and Mr.
Allan refusing to allow him to resign, he suc-
ceeded in being cashiered in 1831. In 1829 he
had published a second edition of his poems
under a new title, and in 1831 he published a
third volume, dedicated to his fellow students.
Mr. Allan's anger at the Military Academy dis-
grace caused Poe to leave his home and go to
Baltimore, where he took up literature as a pro-
fession, turning his attention to prose. His first
story, published in the Saturday Visitor in 1833,
won him the $100 prize offered by that paper.
He became editor of the Southern Literary Mes-
senger of Richmond in 1835, and here he began
to show the peculiar, mystical side of his writ-
ings, and his ability and fearlessness as a critic.
He became editor of Graham's Magazine in 1836
and in the same year was married to his young
cousin, Virginia Clemm. He was made associate
editor of the " Gentleman's Magazine in 1839, and
in 1841, when this was merged into Graham's
Magazine, became editor. It was at this time
that he published his theories in regard to cryp-
tography, and demonstrated them by solving a
hundred miscellaneous specimens that were sent
to him by his contributors. This same year he
won a hundred dollar prize with his story " The
Gold-Bug."' In 1842 he left Graham's Magazine
and in 1844 became editorial assistant on the
Evening Mirror, then conducted by N. P. Willis,
and in its columns in 1845 first published " The
Raven," In 1846, after an unsuccessful attempt
to conduct the Broadway Journal, he withdrew to
Fordham, N. Y., where on Jan, 30, 1847, his wife
died, and he became a complete recluse, Poe's
works include: Tamer-lane and Other Poems
(1827); Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems
(1829); Poems (1831); A Manuscript Found in a
Bottle (Saturday Visitor, 1833); Berenice (South-
ern Literary Messenger, 1834); The Fall of the
House of Usher (Gentleman's Magazine, 1840);
The Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840);
The Murders in the Rue Morgue (Gentleman's
Magazine, 1841); The Gold-Bug (Dollar Magazine,
1843); The Raven (1845); The Literati of New
Yo7-k(Godey's Lady's Book, 1846); Eureka, a Prose
Poem (1847); Ulalume, The Bells aud Annabel Lee,
written after 1847. Rufus W. Griswold prepared
a memoir of Poe which he published in 1880.
Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman wrote "Edgar A.
Poe and his Critics " (1859); William Fearing Gill
(q.v.) refuted certain statements of Griswold in
" The Life of Edgar Allan Poe " (1876) , and George
E. Woodbury wrote " Edgar Allan Poe," for the
