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An American poet and story-writer; born in Boston, Jan. 19, 1809; died in Baltimore, Md., Oct. 7, 1849. Left an orphan in early childhood, he was adopted by John Allan of Richmond, Va., and at the age 28 of 19 left this home and published his first volume of verse at Boston. He was a cadet at the United States Military Academy, 1830-31; and subsequently was editor of the Southern Literary Messenger, 1835-37; of the Gentleman's Magazine, 1839-40; of Graham's Magazine, 1841-42; and of the Broadway Journal, 1845. He also contributed to the Evening Mirror, Godey's Lady's Book, the Whig Review, and other periodicals. He projected a magazine to be called Literary America, and to aid it, lectured in New York city and through the South, 1848-49. He died under distressing conditions at Baltimore in 1849. A complete list of his works in book form includes: "Tamerlane and Other Poems" (Boston, 1827); "Al Aaraf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems" (Baltimore, 1829); "Poems" (2d ed., including many poems now first published, New York, 1831). The "Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, of Nantucket" (New York, 1838); "The Conchologist's First Book" (Philadelphia, 1839); "Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque" (Philadelphia, 1840); "The Prose Romances of Edgar A. Poe" (Philadelphia, 1843); "The Raven and Other Poems" (New York, 1845); "Mesmerism: In Articulo Mortis" (London, 1846); "Eureka, a Prose Poem" (New York, 1848). After his death there were republished "The Literati: Some Honest Opinions about Autorial Merits and Demerits, with Occasional Words of Personality", etc., edited by R. W. Griswold (New York, 1850); "Tales of Mystery, Imagination, and Humor; and Poems", edited by Henry Vizetelly (London, 1852). A collected edition was issued in 3 vols., 1850, 4th vol. 1856. The definitive edition is the one edited by E. C. Stedman and G. E. Woodberry (10 vols., Chicago, 1894-95).