West Point cadet Edgar Allan Poe attended. In May 1827, Edgar enlisted in the US Army as Edgar A. Perry
In the Netflix mystery movie The Pale Blue Eye, Edgar plays the detective. He gave a false age of 22, yet he was only 18 when he enlisted in the US Army.
In the brand-new film The Pale Blue Eyes, Poe plays one of the characters. The mystery thriller is based on the same-named book. In 2003, Louis Bayard penned it.
Prior to its January 6, 2023 release on Netflix, the movie had its premiere on December 23, 2022, in a small number of carefully chosen theaters. Christian Bale and Harry Melling, who play Landor and Poe, respectively, are featured in it.
Because of how Poe is represented in the film, some viewers are interested in learning more about his actual life and work. Many people are unsure if he ever worked as a detective.
Edgar Allan Poe: Was He In West Point Cadet?
After enlisting in the US Army in 1827, Edgar Allan Poe was a West Point cadet. Edgar claimed to be 22 years old under the name Edgar A. Perry, although he was actually 18 years old.
Poe was in financial trouble, so he was forced to lie. Because of his gambling debts, he lost his relationship with his foster father, John Allan, and was forced to rely on his profession as a clerk and a newspaper writer under the alias Henri Le Rennet.
He lied about his age and used a phony name to enlist in the US Army because he was unable to support himself.
He was employed in Fort Independence in Boston Harbor, but after a few months, his regiment was transferred to Fort Moultrie in Charleston, South Carolina. As an enlisted craftsman who produced artillery projectiles, he was promoted to “artificer.”
He received a promotion to Sergeant Major for Artillery after serving for two years. Nevertheless, he made the decision to leave his five-year enlistment early in order to enroll in the West Point Military Academy.
He explained the discharge to his commanding officer, Lieutenant Howard, and even shared the circumstance that drove him to make up his identity and age.
Although the officer acknowledged his situation, he advised Poe to make amends with his foster father if he desired an early release.
Although Allan refused his plea for a few months, it’s possible that he changed his mind after Edgar paid him a visit the day after his wife’s funeral and agreed to help him with the discharge.
He was given an early discharge and was able to get to West Point with the assistance of his foster father. On July 1, 1830, he entered as a cadet, but he only stayed in the army for a short while.
He chose to be court-martialed on purpose, as stated in the National Archives. He missed formations, classes, and church, and was therefore deemed to have neglected his obligations and disobeyed orders.
Nevertheless, he entered a not guilty plea to force his discharge and left New York after leaving the service. When he left the service, he decided to pursue a career as a writer.
Edgar Allan Poe: Collaborates With The Pale Blue Eyes Detective
The tale of seasoned detective Augustus Landor is told in The Pale Blue Eyes. He was contacted by representatives of the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, in 1830 to look into a string of homicides. To investigate the riddle, he enlists the aid of Edgar, a young cadet in the military.
A real-life man served as the model for Edgar, a military cadet who teams up with Augustus to look into a homicide at the academy in the film. Consequently, Edgar Allan was a West Point cadet.
He is not, however, a detective as depicted in the film. Poe was one of the pioneers of the detective fiction subgenre, though. His detective novels include The Purloined Letter, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, and The Mystery of Marie Roget.
C. Auguste Dupin appeared in some of Poe’s earliest detective fiction stories, setting the foundation for later literary investigators.
According to his Wikipedia entry, British author Arthur Conan Doyle claimed that each of Poe’s works served as a foundation for the development of literature as a whole and gave the detective story life.In his artwork, Louis Bayard depicts Augustus and himself as detectives.
Additionally, the film’s director, Scott Cooper, discussed his fascination with Poe’s works as a young man on the Netflix site Tudum. His father had mentioned the book with Edgar at its core to him before he made his directorial debut.
Edgar Allan Poe: Bio
Plaque in Boston indicating roughly where Poe was born.
The second child of English-born actress Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe and American actor David Poe Jr., Edgar Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts on January 19, 1809.
Rosalie, his younger sister, and William, his older brother, were his siblings. Around 1750, their great-grandfather David Poe left County Cavan, Ireland, and immigrated to America.
His mother passed away from consumption a year after his father abandoned the household in 1810. (pulmonary tuberculosis).
Poe was next brought into the residence of John Allan, a prosperous trader in Richmond, Virginia, who dealt in a wide range of products, including fabric, wheat, tombstones, tobacco, and slaves.
Although they never formally adopted him, the Allans served as his foster parents and gave him the name “Edgar Allan Poe”.
Poe was baptized into the Episcopal Church by the Allan family in 1812. John Allan alternated between spoiling and harshly correcting his foster kid.
Poe briefly attended the grammar school in Irvine, Ayrshire, Scotland (where Allan was born) after the family moved to the UK in 1815, before reuniting with his family in London in 1816.
Up until the summer of 1817, he attended a boarding school in Chelsea. He was then enrolled in the Reverend John Bransby’s Manor House School in Stoke Newington, a neighborhood at the time that was located 6 kilometers (4 miles) north of London.
In 1820, Poe returned to Richmond with the Allans. He was the lieutenant of the Richmond youth honor guard in 1824, while the city was celebrating the Marquis de Lafayette’s visit.
When William Galt, Allan’s uncle and business patron who was reputed to be one of Richmond’s wealthiest men, passed away in March 1825, he left Allan several acres of land. The projected value of the inheritance was $750,000 (which would be $18,000,000 in 2021).
By the summer of 1825, Allan had acquired a two-story brick home called Moldavia as a way to show off his vast wealth.
Also Read: Paula Wilcox: Is She Spotted in Stonehouse? Bio, Wiki, Career, Net Worth (2023), Dating Life
Edgar Allan Poe: Career
- After his brother’s passing, Poe made more sincere endeavors to launch his own career, but he did it during a challenging period for American publishing.
- He was one of the first Americans to support himself solely through writing and was hindered by the absence of a global copyright regulation.
- Rather than paying for original work by Americans, American publishers frequently made unlicensed reproductions of British works.
- The Panic of 1837 also significantly harmed the industry.
- Around this time, American journals grew rapidly thanks in part to new technology, yet many only lasted for a few issues. Because publishers frequently refused to pay their authors or paid them far later than they had promised, Poe frequently had to resort to impudent cries for money and other help.
- In 1835, Poe (then 26 years old) received a license to wed his cousin Virginia Clemm (age 13). Their 11-year marriage—which ended with her death—may have served as an inspiration for some of his writing.
- Poe had abandoned his early attempts at poetry in favor of prose, most likely as a result of John Neal’s criticisms in The Yankee magazine.
- He started working on his lone drama Politian after placing a couple tales with a Philadelphia publication. He received a prize from The Baltimore Saturday Visiter in October 1833 for his short story “MS. Found in a Bottle.”
- The tale made him known to John P. Kennedy, a wealthy Baltimorean who assisted Poe in getting some of his stories published and introduced him to Thomas W. White, editor of the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond.
- Poe was hired as the journal’s associate editor in August 1835, but White fired him shortly after for getting intoxicated at work.
- On September 22, 1835, Poe traveled back to Baltimore and sought a license to wed his cousin Virginia, however it is unknown if they were already wed at that time. He was 26 and she was 13 years old.
- Poe returned to Richmond with Virginia and her mother after being reinstated by White for good behavior. Up until January 1837, he worked at the Messenger. Poe asserted that at this time, its readership rose from 700 to 3,500.
- He contributed various articles, poems, and book reviews to the newspaper. At their Richmond boarding home on May 16, 1836, he and Virginia had a Presbyterian wedding ceremony officiated by Amasa Converse, with a witness falsely attesting to Clemm’s age as 21.
Edgar Allan Poe: Death
The circumstances and cause of Edgar Allan Poe’s death are still unknown; he is interred at Westminster Hall in Baltimore, Maryland (Lat: 39.29027; Long: 76.62333).
Poe was discovered on October 3, 1849, in Baltimore, “in severe suffering, and… in need of rapid care,” according to the person who found him, Joseph W. Walker.
He was carried to the Washington Medical College, where he passed away at five in the morning on Sunday, October 7, 1849.
Poe couldn’t stay coherent long enough to explain how he got into his precarious situation or why he was wearing other people’s clothes. On the night before he passed away, he is alleged to have frequently yelled “Reynolds,” though it is unknown to whom he was referring.
Poe’s final words, according to his attending physician, were “Lord help my miserable soul.” The essential medical records, including Poe’s death certificate, have all been destroyed.
At the time, newspapers described Poe’s demise as “congestion of the brain” or “cerebral inflammation,” which are euphemisms for unethical causes like drunkenness.
The precise reason of death is still unknown.
Syphilis, meningeal inflammation, delirium tremens, heart disease, epilepsy, cholera, carbon monoxide poisoning, and rabies have all been suggested as possible causes.
According to an 1872 idea, Poe passed away as a result of cooping, a type of political fraud in which voters were coerced into supporting a certain candidate, which occasionally culminated in violence and even murder.
Also Read: Tim Draxl: Partner Barrittone, Bio, Wiki, Age, Pet Dog, Net Worth (2023), Height and Weight