How did Edgar Allan Poe die?

According to Poe's letter of September 18, 1849 to Mrs. Clemm, he expected to stop in Philadelphia to call on a poetess whose verses he was to edit. 

Joseph W. Walker wrote the following letter to a certain Dr. J. E. Snodgrass on October 3, 1849.

Dr. Snodgrass found Poe at Gunner's Hall, a public house at 44 East Lombard Street, and he and Henry Herring, the husband of Poe's aunt, Elizabeth Poe, took him to Washington College Hospital on the afternoon of October 3. He did not regain consciousness sufficiently to tell the doctor how he arrived at this condition. Poe died at five o'clock on Sunday morning, October 7, and was buried on October 9 in the Presbyterian Cemetery at Fayette and Green Streets in Baltimore. In 1875, his coffin was removed to the southeastern corner of the cemetery where his monument now stands.

Source: Arthur Hobson Quinn in The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (Barnes & Noble), 1992.

MP3 of Poe's dying words in the hospital (you decide!)

• Obituaries:
  • Home Journal (New York), October 20, 1849, p. 2, cols.2-4. (Nathaniel Parker Willis, “Death of Edgar Poe,”)
  • Poe Death Dossier (original newspaper clippings)
  • Richmond Republican, October 15, 1849 by Susan Archer Talley (Weiss)
  • Southern Literary Messenger
     
• Death Theories:
  • E. A. Poe Society of Baltimore - Poe's Death
  • The Murder of Edgar Allan Poe - from Crime Library
  • Rabies Theory : University of Maryland Medical News (1996)
     
• Celebrity Morgue's Death Shot of Poe (you decide!) 
• Who Is Buried in Edgar Poe's Grave?
• Washington College Hospital
• Here's more bio info on Poe
• Join Poe's 100 Words for Graveyard
• Read C. Auguste Dupin's Remarks
• Who is the mysterious visitor to Poe's grave bearing cognac and roses?

Poe's Library

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