After a textual montage summarizing Edgar Allan Poe's life, the film begins in late September 1849 with Poe awakening from a hallucination where he is buried alive. He prepares to take a trip to New York City via a ferry steamboat from Richmond, Virginia, to Baltimore, and from there, another ferry to New York City itself. He discusses his plans to marry his childhood sweetheart Sarah Elmira Royster with a stranger taking the same steamboat, who suggests that he meet with a few potential investors for his planned magazine "The Stylus". Though Poe had intended only to pass through Baltimore, he agrees to meet the investors who, one by one, turn down his request for funding.