Editing Edgar Allan Poe (section)

== Arrival in Philadelphia ==

Edgar Poe arrived in Philadelphia in 1838 with his young wife Virginia Clemm and her mother Maria, seeking employment in the literary marketplace that the city's publishing industry dominated. His previous years had included military service, brief college attendance, and editorial work in Richmond, none providing the stability his family required. Philadelphia's concentration of publishers and magazines offered opportunities that smaller cities could not provide, the economic calculation that brought him there representing practical necessity as much as artistic ambition.<ref name="silverman">{{cite book |last=Silverman |first=Kenneth |title=Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance |year=1991 |publisher=Harper Collins |location=New York}}</ref>

His initial Philadelphia years involved freelance writing and editorial work before he secured position as editor of Graham's Magazine in 1841. The magazine, under his editorship, saw circulation increase dramatically while publishing fiction and criticism that established national reputation. The stability this employment provided enabled the creative work that his previous circumstances had not permitted, Philadelphia's literary infrastructure supporting productivity that his genius required but could not alone generate.<ref name="kennedy"/>

His residence in various Philadelphia locations culminated in the Spring Garden house (now 532 North 7th Street) where he lived from 1842 to 1844 with Virginia and Maria. The modest brick dwelling, in a neighborhood then at the city's edge, provided the domestic setting from which his imagination ranged into terror and beauty. The house's survival into the present allows visitors to experience the physical space where "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Gold-Bug" were composed, the ordinary dwelling a shrine to extraordinary creation.<ref name="silverman"/>