Challenge: Save Edgar Allan Poe

We aren't sure how he died, but something tells me alcoholism and immense poverty didn't exactly help immensely. Regardless, your goal is to save Edgar Allan Poe. Is it possible? Try to get him to the age of 60 at least.
 
Keep dearest Virginia alive. The spiralling depression caused by her death did nothing good for our author friend.

One PoD that could butterfly his work as an author of any sort would involve him remaining in the military (he happens to be sent off to a war just after finishing West Point).
 
Would he still write poems though of the same amazing power if he wasn't his depressed self? What's sad is we have to choose between having his work or him having a longer life...:( Hopefully I'm wrong.
 
You're going to have to be more specific than that...

Does the challenge imply that Poe has to have the same writing skill OTL? Or does he simply have to live? Because if the POD's are too far back (like taking out tuberculosis out of his life) would affect his writing skills.
 
But all the shit he went through in life was the source of inspiration for all his literary innovation. For him, art really was suffering.
 
Williams, Walter Jon, "No Spot of Ground" In this alternate universe, Edgar Allan Poe managed to wind up as a Confederate Brigadier General in the American Civil War. He has still written fantasy and poetry, albeit a bit different. The war becomes the Hell to him that our Poe knew from chemical dependency.
Isaac Asimov's SF Magazine, November 1989 vol. 13 no. 11 (pp. 136-191)
What Might Have Been, vol. 2: Alternate Heroes (edited by Gregory Benford & Martin H. Greenberg) Bantam 28279-4, January 1990
(pp. 293-354)
http://www.nesfa.org/Recursion/recursive_W.htm

A good story, worth reading.

So would something like this work?
 
Perhaps, although make sure Edgar Allan Poe isn't a bigot or anything(not sure how racist he was, but at least make sure he isn't especially so or anything.)
 
The death of his cousin/wife should still preserve the grim-ness that inspired his work--tuberculosis had already claimed his stepmother, frex--but prevent the "downward spiral."
 
Perhaps, although make sure Edgar Allan Poe isn't a bigot or anything(not sure how racist he was, but at least make sure he isn't especially so or anything.)

He's definitely a racist in that story, but it doesn't seem to be worse than what's normal.

Been a while since I read it, so I can't remember. Vehemately anti-Yankee as Yankee representing all the awfulness of the modern world (as opposed to a romanticized past when poets wrote about lofty things and working men were in their place).

But we could probably run with the basic concept - maybe put him in the US army - and save him.

If memory serves, he's saved by a widow from drowning in his own puke the gutter and the rest...well, if this is worth running with I'll find my copy with the story.
 
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