Maryland on Stamps
Richard D. L. Fulton
Edgar Allan Poe
Although Richmond is the place Poe most considered home, Baltimore defines the beginning and the end of his life.
~ “Edgar Allan Poe in Baltimore,” The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore
The United States Postal Service (USPS) issued two stamps commemorating the noteworthy poet and horror writer, Edgar Allan Poe.
The first was issued on October 7, 1949, in commemoration of Poe’s death. In 1940, the USPS issued a set of 35 different stamps, the Famous Americans Series, but Poe was not included among those dedicated to authors. The Poe stamp was added and essentially became part of the set in 1949.
A second Poe stamp was issued by the USPS on January 16, 2009, on the 200th Anniversary of Poe’s birth.
First Day of Issue covers of the 1949 and 2009 stamps were both canceled in Richmond, Virginia, despite the fact that Poe was neither born nor died in Virginia.
Edgar Allan Poe was born in 1809 to parents, David and Elizabeth Poe. His father abandoned Poe and his infant sister, his older brother, and his mother sometime before 1811. His mother died in 1811, thereby leaving the three children parentless. The children were subsequently separated and adopted by three different families.
Poe was unofficially adopted by John and Frances Allan of Richmond, but they did give him their last name/surname as his middle name (he was not given a middle name at birth): Allan.
Poe had enrolled in the University of Virginia in 1826, but only attended for one year because John Allan refused to continue paying for his schooling. He then subsequently enlisted in the Army in 1827, under an assumed name, lying about his age, and served until 1829, according to the National Park Service (NPS).
He enrolled in the Military Academy at West Point in 1830. but was ultimately court-martialed as a result of purposeful failure to fulfill his duties and, hence, was thereby discharged in 1831.
Poe moved to Baltimore in 1831, where he lived with Maria Clemm, who was his aunt, and his cousin (and his future wife), Virginia Clemm. In 1833, he was awarded a $50 prize for a short story, which had been submitted to the Baltimore Saturday Visitor.
The award resulted in his being offered an editorial position in Richmond, thereby requiring his move to Virginia in 1835. Maria and Virginia Clemm joined him in 1836. Shortly thereafter, Poe, at age 27, married Virginia Clemm, age 13 (who had stated she was 21 on the marriage certificate).
Poe and his wife moved to New York in 1844, where he continued to work as an editor. Virginia Poe died three years later of tuberculosis.
In spite of the loss of his beloved wife, Poe continued to write.
In 1849, he was returning from a lecture tour in the South when he was hospitalized in Baltimore, where he subsequently died. The attending physician documented the cause as “acute congestion of the brain,” which referred to swelling or inflammation of the brain. Although, the exact cause of Edgar Allan Poe’s death remains a mystery.
Poe was buried in an unmarked grave at the Westminster Presbyterian Church in West Baltimore, but was later moved to a marked grave.
Poe wrote 69 short stories and 48 poems during his life. Some of the best-known included The Tell-Tale Heart, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Masque of the Red Death, and, of course, The Raven (which inspired the Baltimore football team to assume the name, the Baltimore Ravens).
Poe did not only write short horror stories and poems. He also wrote several detective stories, featuring the sleuth, C. Auguste Dupin, who first appeared in Poe’s 1841 short story, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, and subsequently in The Mystery of Marie Rogêt in 1842, and in The Purloined Letter in 1844.
Author Edgar Rice Burroughs was so inspired by Poe’s “Dupin” that Burroughs created his own sleuth detective, by the name of “Sherlock Holmes.”
Burroughs, in his first Sherlock Holmes book, A Study in Scarlet, written in 1887, acknowledged Poe’s Dupin when Doctor Watson said to Holmes, “You remind me of Edgar Allan Poe’s Dupin,” to which Holmes replies, “No doubt you think that you are complimenting me in comparing me to Dupin … Now, in my opinion, Dupin was a very inferior fellow.”
For additional information on Edgar Allan Poe, you may visit the website of the “Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore” at eapoe.org.
