Lindsey Graham

In the summer of 1838, Poe decided to try to make a fresh start, and the destitute family moved to Philadelphia.

Soon after, Poe published his first and only novel, a South Pole adventure story called The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.

In an attempt to attract a wide audience, he included murder, mutiny, cannibalism, and exploding ships in the novel.

He called it a very silly book.

Critics agreed with his assessment.

Sales were modest, and Poe sank deeper into his financial abyss.

But in the summer of 1839, publisher William Burton hired Poe as an assistant editor at Burton's Gentleman's Magazine.

Burton's offered Poe a new outlet for his work, and in September of that year, he published a gothic horror story called The Fall of the House of Usher.

In it, an unnamed narrator visits an eerie, decaying mansion and watches as the Usher family descends into madness and death, culminating in the collapse of the mansion itself.

With the fall of The House of Usher, Poe transformed the horror genre.

In the past, horror writers had focused on external monsters, but Poe delved into the dark recesses of the human subconscious with lurid detail and dramatic flair.

He used an unreliable, first-person narrator to create a sense of unease, and he explored taboo subjects such as insanity and incest.

Usher established his reputation as a serious writer and led to the publication of his first collection of short stories.

but he earned little money for these efforts.

And he resented the low salary and menial duties of his role at Burton's.

Here, too, he clashed with his boss over his heavy drinking and his scathing book reviews.

In one review, Poe accused the beloved author James Fenimore Cooper of irreparable mental leprosy, declaring that Cooper's recent works were a flashy succession of ill-conceived and miserably executed literary productions, each more silly than its predecessor.

In May 1840, Poe announced his plans to start a rival magazine, and Burton promptly fired him.

Poe stormed out of his office in anger, then followed up with a furious letter declaring, If you think that I am to be insulted with impunity, I can only assume that you are an ass.

But Poe failed to obtain the financial backing needed to get his magazine off the ground, and in February 1841, he took another publishing job, this time as the editor at the newly launched Grams magazine.