In 1826, Poe entered the University of Virginia, newly founded by former President Thomas Jefferson. He distinguished himself as a student, but he also took to drinking, and he amassed gambling debts of $2,000, a significant amount of money at the time, which John Allan, although he had recently inherited a fortune, refused to honor. After quarreling with Allan, Poe left Richmond in March 1827 and sailed to Boston, where, in relatively short order, he enlisted in the United States Army (under the name Edgar A. Perry, and claiming to be four years older than his actual age of eighteen) and published a pamphlet called Tamerlane and Other Poems, whose author was cited on the title page only as "a Bostonian." This little book did not sell at all, but its few surviving copies are among the most highly prized items in the rare-book market; one accidentally discovered copy, bought for a dollar, was recently auctioned for $150,000. Poe's military career went more successfully. After two years, he had been promoted to sergeant major, the highest noncommissioned rank. He was honorably discharged in 1829, and decided to seek an appointment to West Point in the hope of becoming a career commissioned officer. He entered West Point in May of 1830, but chafed under the regimen and, after deliberately missing classes, roll-calls, and compulsory chapel attendance, was expelled in January 1831.

In 1829, Poe had published a second collection of verse, which attracted little more attention than its predecessor. A third volume, funded through contributions from fellow cadets, appeared in 1831. Among its contents was "To Helen," which had been inspired by Jane Stanard, the mother of one his Richmond schoolmates. Poe referred to her as "the first, purely ideal love of my soul." Also in 1831, Poe went to Baltimore, where he moved in with his widowed aunt Maria Clemm, his father's sister, who was to be the most deeply devoted of his several mother-figures, and her eight-year-old daughter Virginia. It was in this period that he began to achieve wider recognition as a writer. In 1832, he published five tales in the Philadelphia Saturday Courier. In 1833, he entered a competition sponsored by the Baltimore Saturday Visiter (sic), winning the second prize in poetry for "The Coliseum" and the first prize in fiction for "MS. Found in a Bottle." In 1834, the publication of "The Visionary" in Godey's Lady's Book marked the first time that his fiction appeared in a magazine of more than local circulation.

Frances Allan had died in February 1829, and John Allan, who was by this time permanently alienated from Poe, had remarried in October 1830. On Allan's death in 1834, Poe received nothing. Effectively disinherited, unsuited for business or the military, Poe turned to journalism, th

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