Edgar Allan Poe's Charleston

An in-depth history of Poe’s time spent in the South Carolina port city where he secretly enlisted in the United States Army. Edgar Allan Poe arrived in Charleston in November 1827 chased by storms, both literal and figurative. Some of the author’s previous indiscretions caused him to enlist in the U.S. Army six months earlier under the pseudonym Edgar A. Perry. The more than one year that Poe spent stationed at Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island has been shrouded in mystery for nearly two centu