1 - The student and the book

Summary

I loitered away my boyhood in books, and dissipated my youth in reverie …

“Berenice”

Ellis and Allan, a Richmond, Virginia, import/export firm established by Charles Ellis and John Allan in 1800, became profitable enough during the following decade and a half for the partners to decide to open a London office after the War of 1812 had ended. In 1815, John Allan left Richmond for London, taking with him his family: his wife Frances; her unmarried sister, Ann “Nancy” Valentine, who had long been a member of their household; and Edgar Poe, the young boy John and Frances had unofficially adopted some years before. After spending time in Scotland, they reached London in the first week in October. By month's end, they had found lodgings in Bloomsbury. Allan wrote home to his business partner, describing his family and their cozy accommodations, depicting himself seated “by a snug fire in a nice little sitting parlour in No. 47 Southampton Row, Russel[1] Square where I have procured Lodgings for the present with Frances and Nancy Sewing and Edgar reading a little Story Book.”

That young Poe was busy reading is unstartling. John Allan had already recognized the child's precocity and purchased some books for him before they left the United States. The books Allan had purchased, schooltexts by the English grammarian Lindley Murray, may have been useful for Poe's education, yet they would hardly have appealed to him as much as the day's storybooks.