Lindsey Graham

Edgar and his two siblings were separated and sent to live with strangers.

A wealthy woman named Frances Allen persuaded her husband John, a successful merchant, to take in Edgar.

The Allens never legally adopted him, but they gave him a home, as well as their name.

He became known as Edgar Allan Poe.

The Allens provided Edgar with an elite education, including a five-year stint abroad attending English boarding schools.

He was an athletic child and an enthusiastic student, and he showed a talent for poetry at a young age.

But John Allen was inconsistent in his parenting approach, alternating between indulging the young Edgar and scolding him.

By his teenage years, Edgar was brooding and lonely.

At age 15, he became despondent over the death of a friend's mother.

He suffered from terrible nightmares, and increasingly he clashed with his hard-nosed foster father who complained that Edgar was miserable, sulky, and ill-tempered.

He wrote, He would later write, The want of parental affection has been the heaviest of my trials.

In 1825, at the age of 16, Edgar became secretly engaged to his neighbor Elmira Royster.

That same year, his foster father, Alan, inherited a vast fortune.

The Alans had no other children, so Edgar assumed the money would one day pass to him.

Then at age 17, in February 1826, he entered the University of Virginia.

Edgar was slender, with jet-black hair and dark, expressive eyes.

Classmate noted that he wore a sad, melancholy face always.

He was prone to intense mood swings and began drinking excessively.

Despite his volatile behavior, though, Poe was a talented student, and he excelled at ancient and modern languages.

But he arrived at university with just a fraction of the total cost of his tuition.