He left the university in March 1827[1] and the already-strained relationship with his foster father, John Allan, grew worse.

[4] John Allan was not aware of Poe's decision or whereabouts and, not concerned, wrote "I'm thinking Edgar has gone to Sea to seek his own fortunes".

[6] After several weeks, in desperation, he enlisted in the United States Army for a five-year term under the pseudonym "Edgar A. Perry"; he gave his age as 22, though he was only 18,[7] likely because he would have needed parental consent if under 21.

His earliest lines of verse were a couplet labeled "Poetry", presumably written sometime in 1824 in the ledger book of Allan & Ellis, his foster father's mercantile company.

[13] His name, typically listed as "Edgar A. Poe", was not published with his work until his second collection, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems in late 1829.

Poe used the low circulation of this collection to attract readers later in his career, suggesting the 1827 poetry book had been "suppressed through circumstances of a private nature".

[26] Another copy of Tamerlane and Other Poems was published in a 1941 facsimile by Thomas Ollive Mabbott,[10][27] who provided the introduction; his correction and additions to this are found in a subsequent publication.

[29] It is believed only a dozen copies of the original printing of Tamerlane and Other Poems remain, making it one of the rarest of first editions in American literature.

[17] In December 2009, a copy from the William E. Self collection sold at Christie's, New York for $662,500, a record price paid for a work of American literature.

[36][37] The poems, many of which had a theme of youth, were inspired in part by the works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

[40] Some biographers suggest that Poe's wandering to Boston and joining the Army represent a need to live like an outcast inspired by Byron.

[41] The title poem, "Tamerlane", depicts a dying conqueror who regrets leaving his childhood sweetheart and his home to pursue his ambitions.

[14] The choice of an eastern character was unusual for a westerner at the time, though Byron, François-René de Chateaubriand, Thomas Moore and others had written other Orientalist works.

He steps away from the typical use of didacticism of the time and instead focuses on psychological reverie and symbolist aesthetics,[46] beginning his lifelong poetic refusal to write for the masses.

[52] Literary historian Joel Porte suggests the American reading public during this period was more interested in fiction than poetry.

[53] Despite its lack of attention, the publication of Tamerlane and Other Poems gave a young Poe the confidence to continue writing.

[54] Modern scholar Joseph Wood Krutch said the collection "save for a few poems, [was] distinctly prentice work".

[57] The work was originally published without a table of contents; later editions and commentary use the titles or first lines to identify the poems.