The Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe

In June 1849, when Edgar Allan Poe was 40 years old, he left his mother-in-law and aunt, Maria Clemm, in their New York home to go on a lecture tour. He planned to raise money to start his own literary magazine. It had been a stressful couple of years since his wife, Virginia, died from tuberculosis. Now, his fortune was improving. He told Clemm he would return “to love and comfort her” and not to worry about “her Eddie.” But she never saw him again.