The circulation of the magazine increased by the thousands, and there could be no doubt that its success was due chiefly to Poe.  At first his salary was ten dollars a week; later, it was raised to fifteen dollars, and was to have been raised to twenty, but Poe suddenly resigned his position.  Precisely why he did this is not known.

Experiences similar to that with the Southern Literary Messenger were repeated many times afterward, during his literary career.  Just as he was getting well settled at his work, he would have some difficulty with the proprietor, or commit some indiscretion, and then he must find some other place.  In those days, when a great New York daily paper like Bryant’s Evening Post could be bought for from $5,000 to $10,000, there was not much money to be made in publishing or in literature.  To make money, Poe should have been a business man, and he was not so in any sense.  Many another literary man, even in our own times, has had similar misfortunes, even without those faults of character and that fatality for falling out with everything and everybody which distinguished Poe.

From Richmond, Poe went with his family to New York, where Mrs. Clemm supported the household by keeping boarders.  Poe himself spent the winter chiefly in writing “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym,” a tale of the sea, which was first published by Messrs. Harper and Brothers.

From New York he went to Philadelphia, where he wrote various magazine articles and stories, and did part of the work of preparing a school textbook on “Conchology.”  He soon became associate editor of The Gentleman’s Magazine with its proprietor Burton.  The following year, 1840, his first volume of stories was published, under the title, “Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque.”  The volume was not a popular success.  An edition of seven hundred and fifty copies was barely disposed of, and all that Poe received was twenty copies for distribution among his friends.

His connection with Burton’s magazine did not last above a year.  Burton had been a comic actor, and offered prizes which Poe says he never intended to pay.  Poe’s remarks on this transaction caused the rupture.

Poe had already been thinking about starting a periodical of his own, and now he sent out the prospectus of The Penn Magazine.  To found a magazine which should be better and higher in literary art than any other in America was his lifelong ambition.  He tried again and again to do this, first with The Penn Magazine, and later with a periodical to be called The Stylus.  He never succeeded, however.

George R. Graham, proprietor of the Saturday Evening Post, now bought The Gentleman’s Magazine, united it with a periodical of his own called The Casket, and named the new venture Graham’s Magazine.  Of this Poe soon became the editor.