Taken in but not adopted by foster parents in Richmond, Poe lived in England, Charlottesville, Old Point Comfort, Sullivan’s Island, West Point, and then Baltimore, Richmond again, Philadelphia, New York City, Richmond again, and then finally in Baltimore, where he died on his way to New York. He searched for ways to make a living with his pen and to protect the health of his fragile young wife, purposes often at odds with one another.
While other famous American authors embodied a particular place — Thoreau is synonymous with Walden and Whitman with New York — Poe seemed to be from everywhere and nowhere. His fiction and poetry barely referred to any place in America, evoking instead places in the Old World and fevered imaginations. And yet Poe is often credited with being the most influential American author around the world and across the generations. If he did not actually invent the detective story or the psychological tale of horror, he stamped those genres with his distinctive voice.
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