Edgar Allan Poe

Poe, Edgar Allan (1809-1849), was an American poet, short-story writer, and literary critic. Poe's stormy personal life and his haunting poems and stories combined to make him one of the most famous figures in American literary history.

Poe's life. Poe was born on Jan. 19, 1809, in Boston. His parents were traveling actors. His father deserted the family. After his mother died in 1811, Poe became a ward of John Allan, a wealthy Richmond merchant. The Allan family lived in the United Kingdom from 1815 to 1820 before returning to Richmond. In 1826, Poe enrolled at the University of Virginia. There he acquired gambling debts that John Allan refused to pay. Eventually, Poe was forced to withdraw from the university.

Poe's relationship with Allan deteriorated, and the young man enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1827. During the same year, Poe's first book was published. Its title was Tamerlane and Other Poems, "By a Bostonian." While waiting for an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy, Poe published his second volume of poems, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems (1829). Both collections show the influence of the English poet Lord Byron. In 1830, Poe entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, where he excelled in the study of languages. But he was expelled in 1831 for neglecting his duties.

Poe's Poems (1831) contained two important poems, "To Helen" and "Israfel." He began to publish tales in the early 1830's while living with his aunt Maria Clemm and her daughter Virginia. In 1836, Poe married Virginia Clemm, his 13-year-old cousin.

Poe produced several of his finest tales in the late 1830's, including "Ligeia," "The Fall of the House of Usher," and "William Wilson." These and other stories were incorporated into Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1839). In 1841, he became an editor of Graham's Magazine, to which he contributed "The Murders in the Rue Morgue."

Poe won greater recognition with "The Gold Bug" (1843), a prize-winning tale that appeared in Philadelphia's Dollar Newspaper. The poem "The Raven" (1845) made him famous. Two more collections, Tales and The Raven and Other Poems, appeared in 1845. Early in 1845, Poe antagonized many people with a scathing campaign against the popular American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow for supposed plagiarisms. At a public appearance in Boston later that year, Poe admitted to being drunk, which further alienated the public.

Poe's later years were colored by economic hardship and ill health. Nevertheless, he published the story "The Cask of Amontillado" (1846), "The Philosophy of Composition" (1846), and part of his "Marginalia," a collection of critical notes written for various periodicals during the 1840's.

Virginia Poe died of tuberculosis in 1847, after five years of illness. Poe then sank into poor health, and his literary productivity declined. In 1849, Poe became engaged to marry the widowed Sarah Elmira Royster Shelton, his boyhood sweetheart. On his way to bring Mrs. Clemm to the wedding, Poe stopped in Baltimore. On October 3, he was found semiconscious and delirious outside a tavern used as a polling place. The cause of his death four days later was listed as "congestion of the brain," though the precise circumstances of his death have never been fully explained.

Ljungquist, Kent. "Poe, Edgar Allan." World Book Student. World Book, 2009. Web. 17 Sept. 2009.