Few things hinder the development of a fine private library more than poverty and restlessness. Though Edgar Allan Poe sometimes tried to keep his personal library intact from place to place through various turns of fortune, he never quite managed to do so. Returning to Richmond after leaving the University of Virginia, he brought his books with him. After quarrelling with John Allan, Poe left his Richmond home, yet he subsequently wrote to Allan multiple times, importuning him to send along the trunk containing his books. A few years later, Poe reconciled his differences with Allan long enough to secure entrance to West Point. Packing for the military academy, Poe removed some books from the Allan home to take with him. An angry John Allan wrote to Cadet Poe, accusing him of purloining books not rightly his. Poe responded, “As to what you say about the books &c I have taken nothing except what I considered my own property.” Whatever books Poe had with him when he left West Point no doubt went the way of the secondhand shop during his lean years in Baltimore. He later told James Russell Lowell that he had not even kept copies of his first three volumes of poetry.

When Poe joined the Southern Literary Messenger, he had the opportunity to accumulate a good collection of books for the first time in his life.