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proposal. But the nuptials Poe arranged for Christmas day never took place. When Mrs. Whitman received an eleventh-hour, anonymous report of Poe’s recent drinking, her mother held a brief and ferocious interview with Poe that sent him slouching toward Fordham, never again to return to Providence.
    Poe’s break with Mrs. Whitman only sharpened his desire for Mrs. Richmond, to whom he wrote several impassioned letters in early 1849, dedicating as well a new poem, “For Annie,” which dramatized his November near-death experience. Despite recurrent headaches, he threw himself into daily writing with renewed energy and, responding to a publisher’s invitation, produced for the Boston antislavery newspaper Flag of Our Union such tales as “Hop-Frog,” “Von Kempelen and His Discovery,” “Landor’s Cottage,” and “X-ing a Paragrab.” There he also first published the poems “Dream Within A Dream,” “Eldorado,” and “To My Mother,” as well as “For Annie.” In April he also resumed his “Marginalia” in the Southern Literary Messenger and in May and June published his “Fifty Suggestions” in Graham’s . But Poe’s commentaries on intellectual tidbits signaled a lapse in creative activity. He was depressed both by fears that he would never see Annie again and by ominous trends in the periodical trade: the Columbian Magazine had failed, and other journals (including the Messenger ) were suspending payments to authors. At this low ebb he received a long-delayed letter from one Edward Patterson, a young newspaper editor in Oquawkwa, Illinois, who volunteered to become Poe’s partner in a magazine venture. Dubious about launching a distinguished journal from a frontier village, Poe nevertheless accepted the offer and sent Patterson a sample title page, proposing simultaneous publication in New York and St. Louis. His consuming desire to own and edit The Stylus seemed suddenly close to realization.
    But Poe was destined to be victimized again by his own compulsions. After a soulful week in Lowell with Annie and her husband, Poe set out in late June for Richmond, Virginia, planning now to secure subscribers and contributors before embarking on a tour of the West leading to Oquawkwa. Stopping in Philadelphia, however, Poe imbibed so heavily that he was briefly incarcerated in prison, where his hallucinations involved Mrs. Clemm’s dismemberment. Publisher John Sartain rescued Poe, bought two new poems—an expanded version of “The Bells” and “Annabel Lee”—and helped to collect funds to get Poe to Richmond. Soon after reaching Virginia, he called upon Sarah Elmira Shelton and, renewing a courtship begun in 1825, proposed marriage to her. Like Mrs. Whitman, Mrs. Shelton initially demurred, and not until Poe had delivered a successful lecture (“The Poetic Principle”) and taken a sobriety pledge did she agree to marry him. Poe’s joining the Sons of Temperance marked a desperate bid to change his ways and repair his reputation. In poor health, yet sustained by Mrs. Shelton’s acceptance, he departed for New York, presumably to accompany Mrs. Clemm to Richmond for the wedding. But in Baltimore, his first stop en route, Poe imbibed excessively, and on October 3, an election day, he was discovered at a polling place “rather the worse for wear.” Transported to Washington College Hospital, he remained intermittently delirious for four days and died on October 7, 1849.
     
     
    In a checkered career of barely two decades Poe produced more than sixty poems, some seventy-odd tales, one completed novel, a long prose poem of cosmological theory, and scores of essays and reviews. He introduced into poetry, criticism, and prose fiction many innovations that altered literary culture. Poe’s greatest achievement as a writer, however, transcends his technical or formal innovations. Working in the context of U.S. nation building and territorial expansion, the rise of a capitalist market economy, the