Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to parents who were traveling actors. died probably in 1810 and his mother Elizabeth Hopkins Poe in 1811, leaving three children, of whom William died young and Rosalie ultimately lost her mind. Edgar was taken into the home of a Richmond merchant John Allan and brought up partly in England (1815-20), where he attended Manor School at Stoke Newington. Never legally adopted, Poe took Allan's name for his middle name. .
Poe attended the University of Virginia (1826), but was expelled for not paying his gambling debts. This led to quarrel with Allan, who later disowned him. In 1827 Poe joined the U.S. Army as a common soldier under assumed name and age. He was sent to Sullivan's Island, South Carolina, which provided settings for 'The Gold Bug' (1843) and 'The Balloon Hoax' (1844). In 1830 Poe entered West Point and was dishonorably discharged next year, for intentional neglect of his duties - apparently as a result of his own determination to be released. .
Little is known about his life in this time, but in 1836 Poe married his 13-year-old cousin Virginia Clemm. She busted a blood vessel in 1842, and remained a virtual invalid until her death from tuberculosis five years later. After the death of his wife, Poe began to lose his struggle with drinking and drugs. He addressed the famous poem 'Annabel Lee' (1849) to her - its subject, Poe's favorite, is the death of a beautiful woman.
Annabel Lee was a poetic project undertaken when he was still suffering from the death of his wife, but in the process of seeking out a new one. Most people agree that Edgar Allan Poe wrote "Annabel Lee" about his departed wife, Virginia Clemm, who died of tuberculosis two years earlier. Some critics, however, contend that in the seventh line of the poem he states, "I was a child and she was a child," and he certainly was no child in 1836 at twenty-seven when he married his thirteen-year-old bride.
