Edgar Allan Poe lived a short and difficult life. He only lived for forty years. People he cared about continued to die around him. It is believed that his stories became progressively darker as more and more of the people he loved died. Poe almost never made money from his writing. Additionally, when he lived with his adoptive parents, he was always poor. Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809. His parents were David Poe and Eliza Arnold. David Poe abandoned the family when Edgar was still a toddler. His mother died of tuberculosis before he was even three years old. John and Frances Allan became his adoptive parents. They were the ones who added “Allan” as a middle name (Meltzer 23). John Allan was a wealthy tobacco exporter and he sent Edgar to some of the best boarding schools. He also attended the University of Virginia at the age of sixteen and a half. However, he was forced to leave school less than a year later because he was unable to pay his gambling debts. His relationship with John Allan collapsed and he stopped giving her money. 'money. In 1827, Edgar Allan Poe enlisted in the United States Army. He probably signed up for the money he absolutely needed. The same year, he published his first booklet, “Tamerlane and other poems”. Unfortunately, he received almost no notification. In the preface, Poe claimed that he wrote these poems when he was only thirteen years old. Still in the preface it says: “They were of course not intended for publication; why they are now published is no one’s business but himself.” Surprisingly, Poe never signed himself as the author of the libretto. Instead, it was signed as By a Bostonian (The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore). Today, there are only twelve known copies of "Tam...... middle of paper......ter friend, James K. Paulding, who had just been appointed Secretary of the Navy, for find him a job in his department: "anything, by sea or land, to relieve me from the miserable life of literary drudgery to which I now submit, with a broken heart, and for which neither my temperament nor my abilities are not suitable for me. » But this too, like all his efforts to find a job that did not require writing, came to nothing. Works CitedClaxton, Rebecca. “Poe’s Raven.” Wikispaces Classroom. NP, 2013. Web. November 21, 2013. .Cole, Diane. “Investigate the Tales of Edgar Allan Poe.” US News & World Report 2008: n. page. Print."Edgar Allan Poe." Academy of American Poets. Academy of American Poets, 1997-2013. Internet. November 20, 2013. Meltzer, Milton. Edgar Allan Poe: a biography. Minneapolis: Lerner Publishing Group, 2003. Print.