HistoricSiteMarkers
Early Republic

Edgar Allan Poe, David Poe, and Elizabeth Poe

Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts

Marker Inscription

1809 1849 Edgar Allan Poe poet - storywriter - critic Born on Carver Street January 19, 1809, to David and Elizabeth (Eliza) Poe, actors at the Boston Theatre. In 1827 published his first book, Tamerlane and Other Poems, at a shop on the corner of Washington and State Streets and enlisted in the U.S. Army at Fort Independence, Boston Harbour. Lectured in Boston October 16, 1845. Published 'Landor's Cottage', his last tale, in Boston's Flag Of Our Union, June 9, 1849. Died at Baltimore October 7, 1849.

Erected by Edgar Allan Poe Memorial Committee

The Story

Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston in 1809 to David and Eliza Poe, actors at the city's theater, and the marker traces his surprising Boston chapters. Here he published his first book, Tamerlane and Other Poems, and enlisted in the U.S. Army at Fort Independence in the harbor before the poverty-haunted career that produced his tales of terror and the modern detective story. He returned to lecture and to print his final tale in a Boston paper months before his death in 1849.

Why it matters

Poe invented and perfected whole genres of American literature — the horror tale and the detective story — and this marker reclaims the Boston roots of a writer usually tied to the South.

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Related people

  • · Edgar Allan Poe
  • · David Poe
  • · Elizabeth Poe

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