Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Poe [1809 -- 1849] was orphaned at an early age and adopted by John Allen of Richmond Virginia whose name he added to his own. After a quarrel with his stepfather he enlisted briefly in the Army and WON an appointment to West Point. But he was temperamentally Not fitted for military life was dismissed for breaking the rules. In 1836 he married his young cousin Virginia Clemm. For a time he served as editor of the Southern literary messenger but heavy drinking which now had become chronic with him cost him the position. He successively edited two other known literary periodicals And was respected as a critic at the same time that his poems and short stories were attracting wide notice both in the US abroad. The death of his beloved wife in 1847 was a blow from which he did not really recover. Edgar Allan Poe Died in Baltimore in 1849 for mysterious or unexplained reasons.