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Edgar Allan Poe

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What are Edgar Allan Poe’s best-known works?

Edgar Allan Poe’s best-known works include the poems “To Helen” (1831), “ The Raven ” (1845), and “ Annabel Lee ” (1849); the short stories of wickedness and crime “ The Tell-Tale Heart ” (1843) and “ The Cask of Amontillado ” (1846); and the supernatural horror story “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839).

Edgar Allan Poe is credited with initiating the modern detective story , developing the Gothic horror story , and being a significant early forerunner of the science fiction form. Poe’s literary criticism , which put great stress upon correctness of language, metre, and structure and the importance of achieving a unity of mood or effect, shaped literary theory.

Edgar Allan Poe turned up in a tavern in Baltimore, Maryland, on October 3, 1849, in bad shape and nearly unresponsive and was soon admitted to a hospital. He drifted in and out of consciousness, hallucinating and speaking nonsense. On October 7 he died, although whether from drinking ,  heart failure , or other causes remains uncertain .

Edgar Allan Poe (born January 19, 1809, Boston , Massachusetts , U.S.—died October 7, 1849, Baltimore , Maryland) was an American short-story writer, poet, critic, and editor who is famous for his cultivation of mystery and the macabre . His tale “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841) initiated the modern detective story , and the atmosphere in his tales of horror is unrivaled in American fiction. His “The Raven” (1845) numbers among the best-known poems in the national literature .

Poe was the son of the English-born actress Elizabeth Arnold Poe and David Poe, Jr., an actor from Baltimore. After his mother died in Richmond , Virginia, in 1811, he was taken into the home of John Allan, a Richmond merchant (presumably his godfather), and of his childless wife. He was later taken to Scotland and England (1815–20), where he was given a classical education that was continued in Richmond. For 11 months in 1826 he attended the University of Virginia , but his gambling losses at the university so incensed his guardian that he refused to let him continue, and Poe returned to Richmond to find his sweetheart, (Sarah) Elmira Royster, engaged. He went to Boston, where in 1827 he published a pamphlet of youthful Byronic poems, Tamerlane, and Other Poems . Poverty forced him to join the army under the name of Edgar A. Perry, but, on the death of Poe’s foster mother, John Allan purchased his release from the army and helped him get an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Before going, Poe published a new volume at Baltimore, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems (1829). He successfully sought expulsion from the academy, where he was absent from all drills and classes for a week. He proceeded to New York City and brought out a volume of Poems , containing several masterpieces, some showing the influence of John Keats , Percy Bysshe Shelley , and Samuel Taylor Coleridge . He then returned to Baltimore, where he began to write stories. In 1833 his “ MS. Found in a Bottle ” won $50 from a Baltimore weekly, and by 1835 he was in Richmond as editor of the Southern Literary Messenger . There he made a name as a critical reviewer and married his young cousin Virginia Clemm, who was only 13. Poe seems to have been an affectionate husband and son-in-law.

Poe was dismissed from his job in Richmond, apparently for drinking, and went to New York City. Drinking was in fact to be the bane of his life. To talk well in a large company he needed a slight stimulant, but a glass of sherry might start him on a spree; and, although he rarely succumbed to intoxication, he was often seen in public when he did. This gave rise to the conjecture that Poe was a drug addict, but according to medical testimony he had a brain lesion. While in New York City in 1838 he published a long prose narrative, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym , combining (as so often in his tales) much factual material with the wildest fancies. It is considered one inspiration of Herman Melville ’s Moby Dick . In 1839 he became coeditor of Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine in Philadelphia . There a contract for a monthly feature stimulated him to write “William Wilson” and “The Fall of the House of Usher,” stories of supernatural horror. The latter contains a study of a neurotic now known to have been an acquaintance of Poe, not Poe himself.

Later in 1839 Poe’s Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque appeared (dated 1840). He resigned from Burton’s about June 1840 but returned in 1841 to edit its successor, Graham’s Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine , in which he printed “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” —the first detective story. In 1843 his “The Gold Bug” won a prize of $100 from the Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper , which gave him great publicity. In 1844 he returned to New York , wrote “The Balloon Hoax” for the Sun , and became subeditor of the New York Mirror under N.P. Willis, thereafter a lifelong friend. In the New York Mirror of January 29, 1845, appeared, from advance sheets of the American Review , his most famous poem, “The Raven,” which gave him national fame at once. Poe then became editor of the Broadway Journal , a short-lived weekly, in which he republished most of his short stories, in 1845. During this last year the now-forgotten poet Frances Sargent Locke Osgood pursued Poe. Virginia did not object, but “Fanny’s” indiscreet writings about her literary love caused great scandal. His The Raven and Other Poems and a selection of his Tales came out in 1845, and in 1846 Poe moved to a cottage at Fordham (now part of New York City), where he wrote for Godey’s Lady’s Book (May–October 1846) “The Literati of New York City”—gossipy sketches on personalities of the day, which led to a libel suit.

Poe’s wife, Virginia, died in January 1847. The following year he went to Providence , Rhode Island, to woo Sarah Helen Whitman , a poet. There was a brief engagement. Poe had close but platonic entanglements with Annie Richmond and with Sarah Anna Lewis, who helped him financially. He composed poetic tributes to all of them. In 1848 he also published the lecture “ Eureka,” a transcendental “explanation” of the universe, which has been hailed as a masterpiece by some critics and as nonsense by others. In 1849 he went south, had a wild spree in Philadelphia, but got safely to Richmond, where he finally became engaged to Elmira Royster, by then the widowed Mrs. Shelton, and spent a happy summer with only one or two relapses. He enjoyed the companionship of childhood friends and an unromantic friendship with a young poet, Susan Archer Talley.

Poe had some forebodings of death when he left Richmond for Baltimore late in September. There he died, although whether from drinking, heart failure , or other causes was still uncertain in the 21st century. He was buried in Westminster Presbyterian churchyard in Baltimore.

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was a writer and critic famous for his dark, mysterious poems and stories, including “The Raven,” “Annabel Lee,” and “The Tell-Tale Heart.”

• Who Was Edgar Allan Poe?

Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, poet , critic, and editor in the 19 th century best known for his evocative short stories and poems that captured the interest of readers worldwide. His imaginative storytelling and tales of mystery and horror gave birth to the modern detective story. Many of Poe’s works, including “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Raven,” and “The Fall of the House of Usher,” became literary classics. Some aspects of Poe’s life, like his literature, are shrouded in mystery, and the lines between fact and fiction have been blurred substantially since his death in 1849 at age 40.

Quick Facts

Army and west point, writing career as a critic and poet, poems: “the raven” and “annabel lee”, short stories, legacy and museum.

FULL NAME: Edgar Allan Poe BORN: January 19, 1809 DIED: October 7, 1849 BIRTHPLACE: Boston, Massachusetts SPOUSE: Virginia Clemm Poe (1836-1847) ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Capricorn

Edgar Allan Poe was born Edgar Poe on January 19, 1809, in Boston. Edgar never really knew his biological parents: Elizabeth Arnold Poe, a British actor, and David Poe Jr., an actor who was born in Baltimore. His father left the family early in Edgar’s life, and his mother died from tuberculosis when he was only 2.

Separated from his brother, William, and sister, Rosalie, Poe went to live with his foster parents, John and Frances Allan, in Richmond, Virginia. John was a successful tobacco merchant there. Edgar and Frances seemed to form a bond, but he had a more difficult relationship with John.

By age 13, Poe was a prolific poet, but his literary talents were discouraged by his headmaster and by John, who preferred that young Edgar follow him in the family business. Preferring poetry over profits, Poe reportedly wrote poems on the back of some of Allan’s business papers.

Money was also an issue between Poe and John. Poe went to the University of Virginia in 1826, where he excelled in his classes. However, he didn’t receive enough money from John to cover all of his costs. Poe turned to gambling to cover the difference but ended up in debt.

He returned home only to face another personal setback—his neighbor and fiancée Sarah Elmira Royster had become engaged to someone else. Heartbroken and frustrated, Poe moved to Boston.

In 1827, around the time he published his first book, Poe joined the U.S. Army. Two years later, he learned that his mother, Frances, was dying of tuberculosis, but by the time he returned to Richmond, she had already died.

While in Virginia, Poe and his father briefly made peace with each other, and John helped Poe get an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point. Poe excelled at his studies at West Point, but he was kicked out after a year for his poor handling of his duties.

During his time at West Point, Poe had fought with John, who had remarried without telling him. Some have speculated that Poe intentionally sought to be expelled to spite his father, who eventually cut ties with Poe.

After leaving West Point, Poe published his third book and focused on writing full-time. He traveled around in search of opportunity, living in New York City, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Richmond. In 1834, John Allan died, leaving Poe out of his will, but providing for an illegitimate child Allan had never met.

Poe, who continued to struggle living in poverty, got a break when one of his short stories won a contest in the Baltimore Saturday Visiter . He began to publish more short stories and, in 1835, landed an editorial position with the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond. Poe developed a reputation as a cut-throat critic, writing vicious reviews of his contemporaries. His scathing critiques earned him the nickname the “Tomahawk Man.”

His tenure at the magazine proved short, however. Poe’s aggressive reviewing style and sometimes combative personality strained his relationship with the publication, and he left the magazine in 1837. His problems with alcohol also played a role in his departure, according to some reports.

Poe went on to brief stints at Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine , Graham’s Magazine , as well as The Broadway Journal , and he also sold his work to Alexander’s Weekly Messenger , among other journals.

In 1844, Poe moved to New York City. There, he published a news story in The New York Sun about a balloon trip across the Atlantic Ocean that he later revealed to be a hoax. His stunt grabbed attention, but it was his publication of “The Raven,” in 1845, that made Poe a literary sensation.

That same year, Poe found himself under attack for his stinging criticisms of fellow poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow . Poe claimed that Longfellow, a widely popular literary figure, was a plagiarist, which resulted in a backlash against Poe.

Despite his success and popularity as a writer, Poe continued to struggle financially, and he advocated for higher wages for writers and an international copyright law.

Poe self-published his first book, Tamerlane and Other Poems , in 1827. His second poetry collection, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems , was published in 1829.

As a critic at the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond from 1835 to 1837, Poe published some of his own works in the magazine, including two parts of his only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym . Later on came poems such as “Ulalume” and “The Bells.”

“The Raven”

Poe’s poem “The Raven,” published in 1845 in the New York Evening Mirror , is considered among the best-known poems in American literature and one of the best of Poe’s career. An unknown narrator laments the demise of his great love Lenore and is visited by a raven, who insistently repeats one word: “Nevermore.” In the work, which consists of 18 six-line stanzas, Poe explored some of his common themes: death and loss.

“Annabel Lee”

This lyric poem again explores Poe’s themes of death and loss and might have been written in memory of his beloved wife, Virginia, who died two years prior its publication. The poem was published on October 9, 1849, two days after Poe’s death, in the New York Tribune .

In late 1830s, Poe published Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque , a collection of short stories. It contained several of his most spine-tingling tales, including “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “Ligeia,” and “William Wilson.”

In 1841, Poe launched the new genre of detective fiction with “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” His literary innovations earned him the nickname “Father of the Detective Story.” A writer on the rise, he won a literary prize in 1843 for “The Gold Bug,” a suspenseful tale of secret codes and hunting treasure.

“The Black Cat”

Poe’s short story “The Black Cat” was published in 1843 in The Saturday Evening Post . In it, the narrator, a one-time animal lover, becomes an alcoholic who begins abusing his wife and black cat. By the macabre story’s end, the narrator observes his own descent into madness as he kills his wife, a crime his black cat reports to the police. The story was later included in the 1845 short story collection, Tales by Edgar Allan Poe .

Later in his career, Poe continued to work in different forms, examining his own methodology and writing in general in several essays, including “The Philosophy of Composition,” “The Poetic Principle,” and “The Rationale of Verse.” He also produced the thrilling tale, “The Cask of Amontillado.”

From 1831 to 1835, Poe lived in Baltimore, where his father was born, with his aunt Maria Clemm and her daughter Virginia. He began to devote his attention to Virginia; his cousin became his literary inspiration as well as his love interest. The couple married in 1836 when she was only 13 years old and he was 27.

In 1847, at the age of 24—the same age when Poe’s mother and brother also died—Virginia passed away from tuberculosis. Poe was overcome by grief following her death, and although he continued to work, he suffered from poor health and struggled financially until his death in 1849.

Poe died on October 7, 1849, in Baltimore at age 40.

His final days remain somewhat of a mystery. Poe left Richmond on ten days earlier, on September 27, and was supposedly on his way to Philadelphia. On October 3, he was found in Baltimore in great distress. Poe was taken to Washington College Hospital, where he died four days later. His last words were “Lord, help my poor soul.”

At the time, it was said that Poe died of “congestion of the brain.” But his actual cause of death has been the subject of endless speculation. Some experts believe that alcoholism led to his demise while others offer up alternative theories. Rabies, epilepsy, and carbon monoxide poisoning are just some of the conditions thought to have led to the great writer’s death.

Shortly after his passing, Poe’s reputation was badly damaged by his literary adversary Rufus Griswold. Griswold, who had been sharply criticized by Poe, took his revenge in his obituary of Poe, portraying the gifted yet troubled writer as a mentally deranged drunkard and womanizer. He also penned the first biography of Poe, which helped cement some of these misconceptions in the public’s minds.

Although Poe never had financial success in his lifetime, he has become one of America’s most enduring writers. His works are as compelling today as they were more than a century ago. An innovative and imaginative thinker, Poe crafted stories and poems that still shock, surprise, and move modern readers. His dark work influenced writers including Charles Baudelaire , Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Stephane Mallarme.

The Baltimore home where Poe stayed from 1831 to 1835 with his aunt Maria Clemm and her daughter, Poe’s cousin and future wife Virginia, is now a museum. The Edgar Allan Poe House offers a self-guided tour featuring exhibits on Poe’s foster parents, his life and death in Baltimore, and the poems and short stories he wrote while living there, as well as memorabilia including his chair and desk.

• The death of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.
• Lord, help my poor soul.
• Sound loves to revel near a summer night.
• But as, in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day, or the agonies which are have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been.
• They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
• The boundaries which divide life from death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?
• With me poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion; and the passions should be held in reverence; they must not—they cannot at will be excited, with an eye to the paltry compensations, or the more paltry commendations, of mankind.
• And now—have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the senses?—now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound well, too. It was the beating of the old man’s heart.
• All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
• I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active—not more happy—nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.
• [I]f you wish to forget anything upon the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.
• Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.

Watch “The Mystery of Edgar Allan Poe” on HISTORY Vault

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Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston. Poe’s father and mother, both professional actors, died before the poet was three years old, and John and Frances Allan raised him as a foster child in Richmond, Virginia. John Allan, a prosperous tobacco exporter, sent Poe to the best boarding schools and, later, to the University of Virginia, where Poe excelled academically. After less than one year of school, however, he was forced to leave the university when Allan refused to pay Poe’s gambling debts.

Poe returned briefly to Richmond, but his relationship with Allan deteriorated. In 1827, Poe moved to Boston and enlisted in the United States Army. His first collection of poems, Tamerlane, and Other Poems  (George Redway), was published that year. In 1829, he published a second collection entitled Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems  (Hatch & Dunning). Neither volume received significant critical or public attention. Following his Army service, Poe was admitted to the United States Military Academy, but he was again forced to leave for lack of financial support. He then moved into the home of his aunt Maria Clemm and her daughter, Virginia, in Baltimore.

Poe began to sell short stories to magazines at around this time, and, in 1835, he became the editor of the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond, where he moved with his aunt and cousin Virginia. In 1836, he married Virginia, who was thirteen years old at the time. Over the next ten years, Poe would edit a number of literary journals including the Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine and Graham’s Magazine in Philadelphia and the Broadway Journal in New York City. It was during these years that he established himself as a poet, a short story writer, and an editor. He published some of his best-known stories and poems, including “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” and “The Raven.” After Virginia’s death from tuberculosis in 1847, Poe’s lifelong struggle with depression and alcoholism worsened. He returned briefly to Richmond in 1849 and then set out for an editing job in Philadelphia. For unknown reasons, he stopped in Baltimore. On October 3, 1849, he was found in a state of semi-consciousness. Poe died four days later of “acute congestion of the brain.” Evidence by medical practitioners who reopened the case has shown that Poe may have been suffering from rabies.

Poe’s work as an editor, poet, and critic had a profound impact on American and international literature. His stories mark him as one of the originators of both horror and detective fiction. Many anthologies credit him as the “architect” of the modern short story. He was also one of the first critics to focus primarily on the effect of style and structure in a literary work; as such, he has been seen as a forerunner to the “art for art’s sake” movement. French Symbolists such as Stéphane Mallarmé and Arthur Rimbaud claimed him as a literary precursor. Charles  Baudelaire spent nearly fourteen years translating Poe into French. Today, Poe is remembered as one of the first American writers to become a major figure in world literature.

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Edgar Allan Poe

A short biography of edgar allan poe, edgar allan poe’s writing style, literary theory.

Along with the satanic and occult , the works of Edger Allan Poe is concerned with Romanticism . His works are also inspired by his intense dreams. He shaped his dreams with his distinctive imagery and use of language. His works have unique imaginations, elaborated techniques, objectivity, and spontaneity . He was appreciated even in his life for his clear and comprehensive criticism as an evaluator of the literature of his time, his poetic idealism and melodic gift, and his dramatic storytelling art. With his distinguished writing style; he secured an imminent position among the well-known men of letters.

The stories, “Ligeia,” “Metzengerstein,” and “Morella” deal with the themes of survival after desolation . Lastly, he also has the theme of fatality in the short stories “The man of Crowd and The Assignation.

Works Of Edgar Allan Poe

Short stories.

Encyclopedia Virginia, Virginia Humanities

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)

Edgar Allan Poe was a poet, short story writer, editor, and critic. Credited by many scholars as the inventor of the detective genre in fiction, he was a master at using elements of mystery, psychological terror, and the macabre in his writing. His most famous poem, “The Raven” (1845), combines his penchant for suspense with some of the most famous lines in American poetry. While editor of the Richmond-based Southern Literary Messenger , Poe carved out a philosophy of poetry that emphasized brevity and beauty for its own sake. Stories, he wrote, should be crafted to convey a single, unified impression, and for Poe, that impression was most often dread. “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843), for instance, memorably describes the paranoia of its narrator, who is guilty of murder. After leaving Richmond, Poe lived and worked in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and New York, seeming to collect literary enemies wherever he went. Incensed by his especially sharp, often sarcastic style of criticism, they were not inclined to help Poe as his life unraveled because of sickness and poverty. After Poe’s death at the age of forty, a former colleague, Rufus W. Griswold, wrote a scathing biography that contributed, in the years to come, to a literary caricature. Poe’s poetry and prose, however, have endured.

Early Years

Edgar Poe was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston, to traveling actors David Poe Jr. (a Baltimore, Maryland, native) and Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins (an emigrant from England). Poe was the couple’s second of three children. His brother, William Henry Leonard Poe, was born in 1807, and his sister, Rosalie Poe, was born in 1810. On December 8, 1811, when Poe was just two years old, his mother died in Richmond. His father, who had left the family in 1810, died of unknown circumstances. Henry, as William Henry Leonard was known, lived with his grandparents in Baltimore, while Rosalie and Edgar remained in Richmond. William and Jane Mackenzie adopted Rosalie, and Edgar became the foster son of John and Frances Allan. Poe received his middle name from his foster parents.

In 1815 Allan, a tobacco merchant, moved with his wife and foster son to England in an attempt to improve his business interests there. Poe attended school in Chelsea until 1820, when the family returned to Richmond. John Allan had always hoped that Poe would join his own mercantile firm, but Poe was determined to become a writer and, in particular, a poet. In 1826, he attended the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Although he distinguished himself academically, Allan denied him financial support after less than a year because of Poe’s gambling debts and what Allan perceived to be his ward’s lack of direction. Without money, Poe returned briefly to Richmond, only to find that his fiancée, Sarah Elmira Royster, under the direction of her family, had married an older and wealthier suitor, Alexander Shelton.

Disheartened and penniless, Poe left Richmond for Boston where, using the name “A Bostonian,” he authored Tamerlane and other Poems (1827), a collection of seven brief, lyrical poems. In particular, “The Lake” employs what would become typical Poe-esque symbolism, with calm waters representing the speaker’s repressed emotions, always threatening to dangerously swell. The book’s sales were negligible.

Still unable to support himself, Poe enlisted in the United States Army on May 26, 1827, under the pseudonym “Edgar A. Perry.” (He was eighteen at the time but claimed to be twenty-two.) During his military service, he was stationed at Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island in Charleston, South Carolina—a site he would later appropriate as the setting for his story, “The Gold Bug”—and then at Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia. On February 28, 1829, while Poe was in Virginia, his foster mother, Frances Allan, died.

Despite having been promoted to sergeant major, Poe became dissatisfied with army life and appealed to his foster father for help in releasing him from his five-year commitment. In a December 1, 1828, letter to Allan, Poe worried that “the prime of my life would be wasted” in the army and threatened “more decided measures if you refuse to assist me.” During this tumultuous period, Poe compiled a second collection of verse, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems (1829), but it, too, received little attention. Critics described the poems in terms ranging from “incoherent” to “beautiful and enduring.”

With Allan’s help, Poe left the army and was admitted to the United States Military Academy at West Point, which he attended from 1830 until 1831. Poe thrived academically, but again experienced financial problems, this time running afoul of both his foster father and school officials. Expelled from West Point and disowned by Allan, Poe traveled to Baltimore to reside with his aunt, Maria Clemm, and her young daughter, Virginia. The events of Poe’s life from 1831 until 1833 remain relatively obscure.

Out of Obscurity

While living in Baltimore, Poe turned in earnest to his literary efforts. His third volume of verse, Poems (1831), hints at the Gothic sensibility—in particular, a preoccupation with death and psychological instability—that would become his trademark. For instance, “Irene” (revised as “The Sleeper”) features a distraught young man who, at midnight, mourns over his lover’s corpse: “Strange is thy pallor! strange thy dress, / Strange above all, thy length of tress, / And this all solemn silentness!” Poe received some help and encouragement from the literary editor and critic John Neal, but his poems continued to attract scant notice.

In an effort to improve his financial position, Poe turned to fiction. Because they sold the best, he wrote mostly Gothic-style horror and suspense stories and, in 1831, entered five of them in a contest sponsored by the weekly newspaper, the Philadelphia Saturday Courier . Although he won no prize, the tales were published anonymously during 1832. In October 1833, Poe’s story “MS. Found in a Bottle”—about a midnight accident at sea and a mysterious ship that appears out of the “watery hell”—won a competition sponsored by the Baltimore Saturday Visiter . His poem “The Coliseum” would have been awarded best poem, as well, but the judges preferred not to offer both prizes to a single author.

One of the competition’s judges was John Pendleton Kennedy, a Whig Party politician, literary editor, and author of Swallow Barn, or a Sojourn in the Old Dominion (1832). In 1835, Kennedy encouraged Poe to apply for an assistant editor position at the Southern Literary Messenger , a Richmond-based magazine founded the previous year by Thomas Willis White. Poe received the job and was soon promoted to editor despite clashing with White over his—Poe’s—excessive drinking.

In May 1836, for the first time feeling financially secure enough to marry, Poe wed his thirteen-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm. Historians disagree over whether they consummated their marriage. Virginia’s mother, Poe’s aunt, kept house for the couple and continued to do so for Poe after Virginia’s death.

Poe’s work at the Messenger helped him climb out of literary obscurity. Under his direction, the journal’s circulation increased and Poe began to develop contacts with the northern literary establishment. He turned these successes to his advantage, publishing revised versions of his own stories and poems. Still, he became best known for his caustic literary criticism, such as a December 1835 review of Theodore S. Fay’s novel, Norman Leslie : “We do not mean to say that there is positively nothing in Mr. Fay’s novel to commend—but there is indeed very little.” And about Morris Mattson’s Paul Ulric , he wrote, in February 1836: “When we called Norman Leslie the silliest book in the world we had certainly never seen Paul Ulric .”

That Fay was a darling of the New York literary establishment helped provoke a long-running feud between Poe and Lewis Gaylord Clark, editor of New York City’s Knickerbocker Magazine and an ardent defender of northern literary sensibilities. Poe and Clark insulted one another in print for years, with Clark, in 1845, calling Poe “‘nothing if not critical,’ and even less than nothing at that.”

A New Literary Sensibility

Poe’s sharp-tongued criticisms may have won him lifelong enemies, but they also served to articulate an important new literary sensibility. Poems should be short, he argued, and poems should be beautiful. In his “Letter to Mr. B—,” published in the Messenger (July 1836), Poe mocks William Wordsworth for his “long wordy discussions by which he tries to reason us into admiration of his poetry,” and then, after quoting the poet on the subject of a “snow-white mountain lamb,” sarcastically rejoinders: “Now, we have no doubt this is all true: we will believe it, indeed we will, Mr. W. Is it sympathy for the sheep you wish to excite? I love a sheep from the bottom of my heart.”

True literature, meanwhile, should celebrate beauty for its own sake and not be burdened with the sort of purposefulness one might find in a Sunday morning sermon. Here, Poe both echoes Nathaniel Hawthorne—who famously complained of those inclined “relentlessly to impale the story with its moral, as with an iron rod”—and pokes fun at his Puritan sensibilities: “I see no reason, then, why our metaphysical poets should plume themselves so much on the utility of their works, unless indeed they refer to instruction with eternity in view; in which case, sincere respect for their piety would not allow me to express contempt for their judgment … ”

“The Tell-Tale Heart” Over the years, Poe also argued that the short story was the supreme form in fiction, meant to be tightly constructed and convey a single, unified impression. In Poe’s case, that impression was most often fear, foreboding, and dread, as evidenced in short stories like “The Cask of Amontillado” (1846), which describes an excruciatingly slow plan of revenge. And for such unified impressions to take hold, brevity—a term Poe calculated to mean a work that took no longer than ninety minutes to read—was crucial. “As the novel cannot be read at one sitting,” he wrote in 1842 in an admiring review of a Hawthorne collection, “it cannot avail itself of the immense benefit of totality . Worldly interests, intervening during the pauses of perusals, modify, counteract and annul the impressions intended.”

Poe did not limit his fiction to Gothic tales, however. From 1833 until 1836, he attempted and failed to find a publisher for his collection of satirical stories, Tales of the Folio Club . In the book, club members meet monthly to critique each other’s stories, all of which turn out to be caricatures of the styles of popular writers from Poe’s day. His critical ax never dull, Poe still managed to place a number of the stories in journals such as the Messenger and the Philadelphia Saturday Courier .

After Richmond

After years of battling the northern literary elite, Poe left the Messenger in January 1837 and moved north himself, working in various editorial posts, most notably at Graham’s Magazine in Philadelphia. Sometime between November 1839 and January 1840, his two-volume collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque was published, providing a broader audience to many of his previously published stories. In stories such as “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Poe rebutted charges of “Germanism and gloom,” Germany being a preferred literary source for his Gothic sensibility. “If in many of my productions terror has been the thesis,” he wrote, “I maintain that terror is not of Germany but of the soul—”

His famous opening to “Usher” suggests that he more than walked the walk of his literary philosophy, expertly compressing Teutonic gloom into a single storm cloud of a sentence: “During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.”

Graham’s , meanwhile, featured some of Poe’s most assertive original fiction. In “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (April 1841), for instance, Poe introduced the detective story prototype that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would make so famous with his Sherlock Holmes episodes: an uncannily observant detective solves the crime while accompanied by his friend, who also narrates the events. In “The Masque of the Red Death” (May 1842), Poe traded the hyper-logic of detectives for the psychological horror of disease and inevitable death, describing a masquerade ball set in a plague-stricken Italian castle.

Later Years

By 1844, Poe had relocated to New York, home of any number of his most bitter literary enemies and where he became the editor and then owner of the literary weekly, Broadway Journal . In January 1845, the New York Evening Mirror published his poem, “The Raven,” a disturbing account of its grief-stricken narrator’s encounter with a bird that knows but one word: “Nevermore.” The poem’s opening lines— “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary / Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,”—are among the most famous in the English language and brought Poe wide and almost instant acclaim. Nevertheless, they failed to deliver him from his persistent financial troubles.

Nor did Poe’s unpredictable moods and pugilistic criticism help him make friends in literary circles. In October 1845, he annoyed a Boston audience prepared for a talk about poetry by instead reciting his long and obscure poem “Al Aaraaf.” He continued to lampoon in print his fellow writers, including Thomas Dunn English, whom he worked with in Philadelphia. Some critics have even suggested that Poe used his feud with English as motivation for his revenge fantasy in “The Cask of Amontillado.”

When Broadway Journal went under in January 1846, Poe lost the most reliable venue for his attacks. And having alienated so many of his fellow writers and editors, he found it difficult to publish and, therefore, to make money. Then, in January 1847, his wife Virginia died of tuberculosis, sending Poe into bouts of depression and torturous grief, during which he reportedly sought the comforts of alcohol. Some historians have speculated that his alcohol use was complicated by either diabetes or hypoglycemia, which would have resulted in violent mood swings. This, in turn, might help to explain later portraits of Poe—in particular from the pen of Rufus W. Griswold, who had succeeded him as editor at Graham’s —as an irreclaimable alcoholic.

In 1849, Poe traveled to Richmond to read his poetry and lecture on “The Philosophy of Composition,” which had been published in the April 1846 issue of Graham’s as a critical explication of his writing of “The Raven.” While there, he reunited with his one-time fiancée, Elmira Shelton, who was now widowed and wealthy. Poe decided to marry her and move to Richmond, and late in September departed for Fordham, New York, where he would arrange to move his aunt Maria to Virginia.

Edgar Allan Poe (Audio) The move never happened, however. A few weeks later, Poe was found unconscious and dangerously ill outside a Baltimore tavern. He died in the hospital on October 7, 1849, and received a swift burial in his grandfather Poe’s cemetery lot in the Westminster Presbyterian Church Cemetery in Baltimore. Historians have long disagreed about the exact cause of his death, suggesting everything from rabies to alcoholism.

Poe had given Griswold a memorandum from which to write a biography of him, but the editor’s use of this work was distinctly unflattering—even treacherous. Griswold quickly produced a polemic obituary and soon after undertook to publish a multivolume edition of Poe’s writings, The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe (1850–1856) , as well as an unjust and inflammatory fifty-page memoir detailing Poe’s life. This sketch, subsequently used by many later biographers, helped in part to create the caricature of Poe that has survived in American literary legend—as a death-obsessed, drug-addled debaucher.

Poe’s room on the West Range at the University of Virginia is open for viewing by the public. In Richmond, the Poe Museum, which first opened in 1922, features a large collection of the writer’s manuscripts, letters, first editions, and personal belongings.

Major Works

• Tamerlane and Other Poems: By a Bostonian (1827)
• Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems (1829)
• Poems, By Edgar A. Poe (1831)
• The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, of Nantucket (short novel, 1838)
• Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840)
• Prose Romances: The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Man That Was Used Up (1843)
• The Raven and Other Poems (1845)
• Tales (1845)
• Eureka: A Prose Poem (1848)
• The Literati (1850)
• Politan: An Unfinished Tragedy (1923)

The Poe Museum

The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore

University of Virginia Library Electronic Text Center

The Poe Studies Association

• Antebellum Period (1820–1860)
• Fisher, Benjamin F. Ed. Poe and His Times: The Artist in His Milieu. Baltimore: The Edgar Allan Poe Society, 1990.
• Hayes, Kevin J., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
• Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography . New York: Appleton-Century, 1941; reprinted with a new foreword by Shawn Rosenheim. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.
• Thomas, Dwight, and David K. Jackson. The Poe Log: A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe 1809–1849 . Boston: G. K. Hall, 1987.
• Wagenknecht, Edward. Edgar Allan Poe: The Man Behind the Legend. New York: Oxford University Press, 1963.
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Poet Biographies

The Mysterious Life of Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was a 19th-century master of vivid imagery and impeccable craftsmanship. His short stories and poems are renowned for their dark, eerie themes. His peculiar demise at a young age rounded off a life of mystery.

Edgar Allan Poe’s work as a poet, short-story writer, and editor was notable in his contribution to world literature. Poe was a pioneer of mysterious, thrilling writing that left its mark on American poetry and literature forever. He is considered one of the originators of detective fiction and true  gothic   horror .

He was also one of the first American writers to gain an international reputation. His overall body of work, such as; poetry, short stories , tales of horror, and even critical theories, has garnered him a major figure in the history of literature.

About Edgar Allan Poe

• 1 Life Facts
• 2 Interesting Facts
• 3 Famous Poems
• 4 Early Life
• 5 Literary Career
• 6 Writing Career and Relationships
• 8 Influence from other Poets
• Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 19, 1809.
• Poe enlisted in the US Army at eighteen years old.
• Poe is credited with the invention of the detective genre of fiction.
• ‘ Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque ‘ was published in 1839.
• Virginia, Poe’s young wife, died in 1847 from tuberculosis, and Edgar Allan Poe died two years later.

Interesting Facts

• He struggled with gambling debts.
• Poe married his thirteen-year-old cousin Virginia.
• He might’ve been named after a Shakespearean character in “King Lear.”
• ‘ The Raven ‘ was published in 1845.
• His death has remained a mystery, inspiring many to speculate on the cause.

Famous Poems

• ‘The Raven’   is one of the scariest poems that Poe wrote. It has since become his most famous and commonly studied. The phrase “Quoth the raven Nevermore” has been included in everything from Halloween decorations to horror movies/tv shows. The poem takes the reader into the mind of a questionable narrator who is experiencing what seems to be a mental break.
• ‘ Anabel Lee’   is a gorgeous short poem that depicts, as many of Poe’s poems did, the death of a woman. Poe’s life was filled with tragedy , particularly around the women he loved. The poem describes the love the speaker had for a young woman who has since been taken away by the angels. Their jealousy got the best of them, and they brought her to Heaven.
• ‘Alone’   is another haunting poem that was inspired by the death of a woman in Poe’s life, this time his foster mother, Frances. In it, the speaker looks at his childhood and tries to understand his loneliness. The entire poem is quite dark and carries a depressing and downtrodden tone throughout.
• ‘The Haunted Palace’ originally appeared in Poe’s short story , The Fall of the House of Usher.  The poem describes, through the metaphor of an old house, the collapse of a person’s mind. This person, who is represented by the house, is slowly but steadily going insane.
• ‘Lenore ,’ which is also sometimes known as ‘A Pæan,’ is once more a description of the emotional results of a young woman’s death. In the poem, the speaker changes perspectives , alternating between different perspectives on Lenore and what everyone should do in regard to her death now.

Explore more Edgar Allan Poe poems here.

Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 19, 1809. He was the second child of English actress Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins and his father, David Poe Jr, who was also an actor. It is often speculated that Poe was named in accordance with the Shakespearean play in which his parents were performing at the time of his birth. His family was both Irish and English by descent and came to America around 1750. He had two siblings, an older brother, William, and a young sister, Rosalie.

Poe’s father left his family in 1810, and unfortunately for the young children, their mother died a year later from tuberculosis, or consumption as it was commonly known. Poe was not yet three years old. From that point on, Poe was raised by a Scotsman named John Allan in Richmond, Virginia. It was from this family that Poe took on his middle name, “Allan.” For a short time, when Poe was still quite young, the family took a trip to Scotland. He studied at a grammar school in Irvine and later at a boarding school in Chelsea, England.

After a temporary stay in Great Britain, the family moved back to Richmond in 1820, and in 1826 Poe registered at the University of Virginia. It was his intention to study ancient and modern languages. Poe’s time at the university was turbulent, and due to increasing gambling debts, he lost touch with his foster father. He left university after only one year and traveled to Boston, where he worked as a newspaper writer and clerk. Poe’s funds and career prospects were quite limited, so in an effort to improve his circumstances, he enlisted in the US Army at eighteen years old.

Literary Career

He served at Fort Independence in Boston at the same time that he was releasing his first volume of poetry titled ‘ Tamerlane and Other Poems .’ The book had very limited printing and received little to no attention. After two years in the army, Poe sought and was given a discharge, after which he moved back to Baltimore, where he stayed with his aunt Maria Clemm and her daughter Virginia Eliza Clemm. He was also publishing his second collection, this time, ‘ Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane , and Minor Poems,’  which was released in 1829.

Due to the circumstances of his military discharge, he was made to attend the United States Military Academy at West Point. His time there was also brief, during which he sought out a court-martial for neglect of duty. He then moved on to New York City. The following years saw the release of his third volume of poetry and the death of his brother. In the mid-thirties, after meeting with no poetic success, Poe turned to  prose . He won a prize for his work in 1833, bringing him a small amount of attention.

In 1835, Poe became the assistant editor of the  Southern Literary Messenger,  was fired for drunkenness, and married his thirteen-year-old cousin Virginia the next year. At their wedding ceremony, the couple was forced to lie about Virginia’s age, stating she was 21 instead of 13. In 1839, he was appointed coeditor for  Burton’s Gentlemen’s Magazine  in Philadelphia. Poe then regained his previous job and published a number of poems, stories, and reviews. It was during this time that he wrote some of his best-known stories such as, “ The Fall of the House of Usher ,” and “ The Murders in the Rue Morgue ,” which is considered to be the inception of the modern detective story . These works were part of the collection ‘ Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque’  published in 1839.

Writing Career and Relationships

Three years later, Poe’s temporary good fortune took a turn for the worse. Virginia began to show signs of consumption, symptoms Poe knew well. His drinking became worse during this time period, and he left his job. He worked for a couple of other journals, and his most popular poem, ‘ The Raven ,’ was published in 1845.

Poe’s wife died in 1847 from tuberculosis, causing a deepening of his depression and further worsening his alcoholism. After her death, he attempted to enter into a permanent relationship with another poet. The couple became engaged, only to split up, driven apart by Poe’s habits.

In 1849, Poe released a lecture called ‘ Eureka ,’ which has been met with mixed reviews to this day. Some scholars and critics viewed the work that explained the universe as a piece of genius, while others considered it nonsensical.

Edgar Allan Poe’s death is still somewhat mysterious. He left Richmond for Baltimore in September 1849. On October 3, 1849, he was found wandering around Baltimore in a semi-conscious state. He was taken to the hospital very early in the morning but was never conscious long enough to explain his condition. It is said that he was wearing someone else’s clothes during the whole ordeal and called out for someone named “Reynolds.” He died four days later of what was then called “acute congestion of the brain.” It is now thought that he had perhaps suffered from rabies, syphilis, cholera, or perhaps heart disease.

Influence from other Poets

Edgar Allan Poe was notably influenced by writers such as  Lord Byron ,  John Keats ,  Percy Bysshe Shelley . He has served as an inspiration for countless others since his death. It is said that the poems of Edgar Allan Poe heavily influenced the French Symbolist movement of the late 19th century.

Edgar Allan Poe has been attributed to many iconic quotes. However, one that stands out is his view on language when he says that “Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.”

Edgar Allan Poe was lauded for his wide range of talents, from short story writing to essays on critical theory. However, his poetry was iconic. His most famous work is ‘ The Raven ,’ a poem about the narrator ’s descent into madness.

Like with any creative person, their life filters through into their work. This was no different for Edgar Allan Poe. After the death of both his parents at a young age and then witnessing the death of his foster mother, it is clear to see the correlation between Poe’s fascination with the macabre and his own life circumstances.

Alongside being a pioneer in his poetic field, Edgar Allan Poe was responsible for creating a number of new words that had not been seen in print before. It is believed that he had a hand in the birth of around 1200 words.

Although we can never know a poet’s true inspiration, it can be argued that Edgar Allan Poe’s life experiences shaped his poetic style . He had suffered many losses throughout his life and had been surrounded by death at every stage. As life imitates art, it is safe to assume that these morbid experiences had an impact on Poe’s work.

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Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe’s stature as a major figure in world literature is primarily based on his ingenious and profound short stories, poems, and critical theories, which established a highly influential rationale for the short form in both poetry and fiction. Regarded in literary histories and handbooks as the architect of the modern short story, Poe was also the principal forerunner of the “art for art’s sake” movement in 19th-century European literature. Whereas earlier critics predominantly concerned themselves with moral or ideological generalities, Poe focused his criticism on the specifics of style and construction that contributed to a work’s effectiveness or failure. In his own work, he demonstrated a brilliant command of language and technique as well as an inspired and original imagination. Poe’s poetry and short stories greatly influenced the French Symbolists of the late 19th century, who in turn altered the direction of modern literature.

Poe’s father and mother were professional actors. At the time of his birth in 1809, they were members of a repertory company in Boston. Before Poe was three years old both of his parents died, and he was raised in the home of John Allan, a prosperous exporter from Richmond, Virginia, who never legally adopted his foster son. As a boy, Poe attended the best schools available, and was admitted to the University of Virginia at Charlottesville in 1825. While there he distinguished himself academically but was forced to leave after less than a year because of bad debts and inadequate financial support from Allan. Poe’s relationship with Allan disintegrated upon his return to Richmond in 1827, and soon after Poe left for Boston, where he enlisted in the army and also published his first poetry collection,  Tamerlane, and Other Poems.  The volume went unnoticed by readers and reviewers, and a second collection,  Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems,  received only slightly more attention when it appeared in 1829. That same year Poe was honorably discharged from the army, having attained the rank of regimental sergeant major, and was then admitted to the United States Military Academy at West Point. However, because Allan would neither provide his foster son with sufficient funds to maintain himself as a cadet nor give the consent necessary to resign from the Academy, Poe gained a dismissal by ignoring his duties and violating regulations. He subsequently went to New York City, where  Poems,  his third collection of verse, was published in 1831, and then to Baltimore, where he lived at the home of his aunt, Mrs. Maria Clemm.

Over the next few years Poe’s first short stories appeared in the Philadelphia  Saturday Courier  and his “MS. Found in a Bottle” won a cash prize for best story in the Baltimore  Saturday Visitor.  Nevertheless, Poe was still not earning enough to live independently, nor did Allan’s death in 1834 provide him with an inheritance. The following year, however, his financial problems were temporarily alleviated when he accepted an editorship at  The Southern Literary Messenger  in Richmond, bringing with him his aunt and his 12-year-old cousin Virginia, whom he married in 1836.  The Southern Literary Messenger  was the first of several journals Poe would direct over the next 10 years and through which he rose to prominence as a leading man of letters in America. Poe made himself known not only as a superlative author of poetry and fiction, but also as a literary critic whose level of imagination and insight had hitherto been unapproached in American literature. While Poe’s writings gained attention in the late 1830s and early 1840s, the profits from his work remained meager, and he supported himself by editing  Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine  and  Graham’s Magazine  in Philadelphia and the  Broadway Journal  in New York City. After his wife’s death from tuberculosis in 1847, Poe became involved in a number of romantic affairs. It was while he prepared for his second marriage that Poe, for reasons unknown, arrived in Baltimore in late September of 1849. On October 3, he was discovered in a state of semi-consciousness; he died four days later without regaining the necessary lucidity to explain what had happened during the last days of his life.

Poe’s most conspicuous contribution to world literature derives from the analytical method he practiced both as a creative author and as a critic of the works of his contemporaries. His self-declared intention was to formulate strictly artistic ideals in a milieu that he thought overly concerned with the utilitarian value of literature, a tendency he termed the “heresy of the Didactic.” While Poe’s position includes the chief requisites of pure aestheticism, his emphasis on literary formalism was directly linked to his philosophical ideals: through the calculated use of language one may express, though always imperfectly, a vision of truth and the essential condition of human existence. Poe’s theory of literary creation is noted for two central points: first, a work must create a unity of effect on the reader to be considered successful; second, the production of this single effect should not be left to the hazards of accident or inspiration, but should to the minutest detail of style and subject be the result of rational deliberation on the part of the author. In poetry, this single effect must arouse the reader’s sense of beauty, an ideal that Poe closely associated with sadness, strangeness, and loss; in prose, the effect should be one revelatory of some truth, as in “tales of ratiocination” or works evoking “terror, or passion, or horror.”

Aside from a common theoretical basis, there is a psychological intensity that is characteristic of Poe’s writings, especially the tales of horror that comprise his best and best-known works. These stories—which include “The Black Cat,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”—are often told by a first-person narrator, and through this voice Poe probes the workings of a character’s psyche. This technique foreshadows the psychological explorations of Fyodor Dostoyevsky and the school of psychological realism. In his Gothic tales, Poe also employed an essentially symbolic, almost allegorical method which gives such works as “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” and “Ligeia” an enigmatic quality that accounts for their enduring interest and links them with the symbolical works of Nathaniel Hawthorne and  Herman Melville . The influence of Poe’s tales may be seen in the work of later writers, including Ambrose Bierce and H.P. Lovecraft, who belong to a distinct tradition of horror literature initiated by Poe. In addition to his achievement as creator of the modern horror tale, Poe is also credited with parenting two other popular genres: science fiction and the detective story. In such works as “The Unparalleled Adventure of Hans Pfaall” and “Von Kempelen and His Discovery,” Poe took advantage of the fascination for science and technology that emerged in the early 19th century to produce speculative and fantastic narratives which anticipate a type of literature that did not become widely practiced until the 20th century. Similarly, Poe’s three tales of ratiocination—“The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Purloined Letter,” and “The Mystery of Marie Roget”—are recognized as the models which established the major characters and literary conventions of detective fiction, specifically the amateur sleuth who solves a crime that has confounded the authorities and whose feats of deductive reasoning are documented by an admiring associate. Just as Poe influenced many succeeding authors and is regarded as an ancestor of such major literary movements as Symbolism and Surrealism, he was also influenced by earlier literary figures and movements. In his use of the demonic and the grotesque, Poe evidenced the impact of the stories of E.T.A. Hoffman and the Gothic novels of Ann Radcliffe, while the despair and melancholy in much of his writing reflects an affinity with the Romantic movement of the early 19th century. It was Poe’s particular genius that in his work he gave consummate artistic form both to his personal obsessions and those of previous literary generations, at the same time creating new forms which provided a means of expression for future artists.

While Poe is most often remembered for his short fiction, his first love as a writer was poetry, which he began writing during his adolescence. His early verse reflects the influence of such English romantics as  Lord Byron ,  John Keats , and  Percy Bysshe Shelley , yet foreshadows his later poetry which demonstrates a subjective outlook and surreal, mystic vision. “Tamerlane” and “Al Aaraaf” exemplify Poe’s evolution from the portrayal of Byronic heroes to the depiction of journeys within his own imagination and subconscious. The former piece, reminiscent of Byron’s “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,” recounts the life and adventures of a 14th-century Mongol conqueror; the latter poem portrays a dreamworld where neither good nor evil permanently reside and where absolute beauty can be directly discerned. In other poems—“ To Helen ,” “Lenore,” and “ The Raven ” in particular—Poe investigates the loss of ideal beauty and the difficulty in regaining it. These pieces are usually narrated by a young man who laments the untimely death of his beloved.  “ To Helen” is a three stanza lyric that has been called one of the most beautiful love poems in the English language. The subject of the work is a woman who becomes, in the eyes of the narrator, a personification of the classical beauty of ancient Greece and Rome. “Lenore” presents ways in which the dead are best remembered, either by mourning or celebrating life beyond earthly boundaries. In “The Raven,” Poe successfully unites his philosophical and aesthetic ideals. In this psychological piece, a young scholar is emotionally tormented by a raven’s ominous repetition of “Nevermore” in answer to his question about the probability of an afterlife with his deceased lover.  Charles Baudelaire  noted in his introduction to the French edition of “The Raven” : “It is indeed the poem of the sleeplessness of despair; it lacks nothing: neither the fever of ideas, nor the violence of colors, nor sickly reasoning, nor drivelling terror, nor even the bizarre gaiety of suffering which makes it more terrible.” Poe also wrote poems that were intended to be read aloud. Experimenting with combinations of sound and rhythm, he employed such technical devices as repetition, parallelism, internal rhyme, alliteration, and assonance to produce works that are unique in American poetry for their haunting, musical quality. In “The Bells,” for example, the repetition of the word “bells” in various structures accentuates the unique tonality of the different types of bells described in the poem.

While his works were not conspicuously acclaimed during his lifetime, Poe did earn due respect as a gifted fiction writer, poet, and man of letters, and occasionally he achieved a measure of popular success, especially following the appearance of “ The Raven .” After his death, however, the history of his critical reception becomes one of dramatically uneven judgments and interpretations. This state of affairs was initiated by Poe’s one-time friend and literary executor R.W. Griswold, who, in a libelous obituary notice in the  New York Tribune  bearing the byline “Ludwig,” attributed the depravity and psychological aberrations of many of the characters in Poe’s fiction to Poe himself. In retrospect, Griswold’s vilifications seem ultimately to have elicited as much sympathy as censure with respect to Poe and his work, leading subsequent biographers of the late 19th century to defend, sometimes too devotedly, Poe’s name. It was not until the 1941 biography by A.H. Quinn that a balanced view was provided of Poe, his work, and the relationship between the author’s life and his imagination. Nevertheless, the identification of Poe with the murderers and madmen of his works survived and flourished in the 20th century, most prominently in the form of psychoanalytical studies such as those of Marie Bonaparte and Joseph Wood Krutch. Added to the controversy over the sanity, or at best the maturity of Poe (Paul Elmer More called him “the poet of unripe boys and unsound men”), was the question of the value of Poe’s works as serious literature. At the forefront of Poe’s detractors were such eminent figures as Henry James, Aldous Huxley, and T.S. Eliot, who dismissed Poe’s works as juvenile, vulgar, and artistically debased; in contrast, these same works have been judged to be of the highest literary merit by such writers as Bernard Shaw and  William Carlos Williams . Complementing Poe’s erratic reputation among English and American critics is the more stable, and generally more elevated opinion of critics elsewhere in the world, particularly in France. Following the extensive translations and commentaries of Charles Baudelaire in the 1850s, Poe’s works were received with a peculiar esteem by French writers, most profoundly those associated with the late 19th-century movement of Symbolism, who admired Poe’s transcendent aspirations as a poet; the 20th-century movement of Surrealism, which valued Poe’s bizarre and apparently unruled imagination; and such figures as Paul Valéry, who found in Poe’s theories and thought an ideal of supreme rationalism. In other countries, Poe’s works have enjoyed a similar regard, and numerous studies have been written tracing the influence of the American author on the international literary scene, especially in Russia, Japan, Scandinavia, and Latin America. Today, Poe is recognized as one of the foremost progenitors of modern literature, both in its popular forms, such as horror and detective fiction, and in its more complex and self-conscious forms, which represent the essential artistic manner of the 20th century. In contrast to earlier critics who viewed the man and his works as one, criticism of the past 25 years has developed a view of Poe as a detached artist who was more concerned with displaying his virtuosity than with expressing his soul, and who maintained an ironic rather than an autobiographical relationship to his writings. While at one time critics such as  Yvor Winters  wished to remove Poe from literary history, his works remain integral to any conception of modernism in world literature. Herbert Marshall McLuhan wrote in an essay entitled “Edgar Poe’s Tradition”: “While the New England dons primly turned the pages of Plato and Buddha beside a tea-cozy, and while Browning and Tennyson were creating a parochial fog for the English mind to relax in, Poe never lost contact with the terrible pathos of his time. Coevally with Baudelaire, and long before Conrad and Eliot, he explored the heart of darkness.”

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Edgar Allan Poe

Short stories.

Edgar Allan Poe, born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1809, lived a life filled with tragedy. Poe was an American writer, considered part of the Romantic Movement, in the sub-genre of Dark Romanticism . He became an accomplished poet, short story writer, editor, and literary critic, and gained worldwide fame for his dark, macabre tales of horror, practically inventing the genre of Gothic Literature . Visit our study guides for The Pit and the Pendulum and The Raven .

Less well known was his role as a prolific literary critic. In response to one of his reviews, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote: “I care for nothing but the truth; and shall always much more readily accept a harsh truth, in regard to my writings, than a sugared falsehood. I confess, however, that I admire you rather as a writer of tales than as a critic upon them.”

Poe had many imitators, and after his death clairvoyants often claimed to "receive" Poe's spirit and "channel" his poems and stories in attempts to cash-in on his fame and talent. The attempt to cash in on his fame was rather ironic considering that Poe died penniless. His work also influenced science fiction, namely Jules Verne , who wrote a sequel to Poe's novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket called An Antarctic Mystery .

All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream.

Students and teachers may benefit from our Gothic Literature Study Guide and D.H. Lawrence 's chapter about Poe in his book, Studies in Classic American Literature .

Enjoy many of Poe's stories in our collections, Gothic, Ghost, Horror & Weird Library , Halloween Stories , and Mystery Stories .

Edgar Allan Poe

Married life and tragedy, some important facts of his life, writing career, poe’s works, poe’s impacts on future literature, edgar allan  poe’s famous quotes, related posts:, post navigation.

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Edgar allan poe.

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Pioneering author, editor, poet, literary critic, husband, son...Edgar Allan Poe lived just to the age of 40 but his works continue to captivate readers around the globe today.

The three children were separated and raised by different families. Edgar was taken in by the successful Richmond merchant John Allan, and his frail wife Frances. The Allans had no children of their own. They raised Edgar as part of the family and gave him their middle name, but never legally adopted him.

From University of Virginia to West Point

Shortly after his quarrel with his foster father, Edgar Allan Poe left Richmond for Boston where he hoped to pursue a literary career. His first book of poetry, Tamerlane and Other Poems was published there. Unable to support himself, and receiving little assistance from his foster father, Poe enlisted as a private in the US Army on May 26, 1827 for a five year term. He entered under an assumed name and lied about his age, claiming to be 22 years old when he was only 18. Poe was assigned to Battery H of the First Artillery at Fort Independence in Boston Harbor. On October 31, 1827 Battery H was ordered to Fort Moultrie to protect Charleston Harbor. He sailed on the Brigantine  Waltham , arriving for duty in Charleston on November 18. 

At Fort Moultrie, Poe was promoted to artificer, the rank of a noncommissioned officer or enlisted man who had a mechanical specialty. On December 11, 1828, Poe’s battery sailed for duty at Fortress Monroe, Virginia where he attained the rank of Sergeant-Major, the highest possible rank for a non-commissioned officer. His quick progress up the ranks can be attributed to his education, high social standing, and competence. Despite his accomplishments, Poe left military service in April 1829 and hired a substitute to complete his obligation. 

Editor and Author

Professional and personal loss.

Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site , Fort Sumter and Fort Moultrie National Historical Park

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Encyclopedia of Humanities

The most comprehensive and reliable Encyclopedia of Humanities

Edgar Allan Poe

We explore the life of Edgar Allan Poe, and his main literary works. In addition, we discuss why he is regarded as one of the universal masters of the short story.

Who was Edgar Allan Poe?

Edgar Allan Poe was a celebrated American writer, regarded as one of the founding fathers of the American short story tradition and a central figure of American Romanticism . His work is considered the starting point of the detective fiction genre, and a contribution of unparalleled influence to horror and science fiction literature.

Poe had a short and tumultuous life, completely devoted to writing . His literary works, which delve into mystery, horror, and the macabre, provided him with a modest livelihood; yet, they have been a unique source of inspiration for subsequent generations of writers.

Poe is an extraordinarily popular figure in contemporary culture, with many of his works having been adapted to various arts and formats: film, animation, and even video games. Today, several of his former homes have been transformed into museums , and the annual literary award given by the Mystery Writers of America bears his name.

• See also: Victor Hugo

Birth and family life of Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 18, 1809 . His parents were American David Poe Jr. and British Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins, both theater actors. Edgar was the middle child of the couple, William being the eldest, and Rosalie the youngest, born in 1810. 

Tragedy marked Edgar's early life. When he was still an infant, his father abandoned the family, leaving his mother to the care of the three siblings. The following year, she succumbed to tuberculosis. Left orphaned, each of the Poe siblings was taken into different homes : William went to the paternal family home in Baltimore, while Edgar and Rosalie were adopted by the Allans and Mckenzies respectively, both from Richmond, Virginia.

John and Frances Allan, Edgar's foster parents, raised and baptized him in the Episcopal faith. Although they never formally adopted him, they did give him their last name . Edgar lived with them until early adulthood.

In 1815, the Allans traveled to the United Kingdom, where Edgar studied in Ayrshire, Scotland, his foster father’s birthplace . Shortly after, in 1816, he studied in London, both in Chelsea and Stoke Newington, before the family returned to Richmond in 1820. In 1825, after receiving a large inheritance, Edgar's foster father purchased a two-story house, which he named "Moldavia".

The following year, Edgar fell in love with Sarah Elmira Royster and also entered the University of Virginia , which he attended for only for 11 months. The institution was in its early stages, and university life was chaotic. Edgar soon found himself immersed in gambling debts, and the financial support from his foster father began to wane. This period marked the onset of family confrontations, leading to a growing estrangement between Edgar and his foster father.  

Eventually, Edgar was forced to drop out of university and return home. There, he was met with a rather hostile atmosphere: he was no longer fully welcome at home, and his former sweetheart had married another man . He then made the decision to leave for Boston in 1827.

Boston and military career

While in Boston, Poe used the pseudonym "Henri Le Rennet", and engaged in writing for newspapers and doing clerical work, among other low-paid jobs. However, he still managed to find time to devote himself to a newly discovered passion: writing .

In fact, in 1827 he published his first work: a pamphlet-sized collection of poems in the style of Lord Byron (1788-1824), entitled Tamerlane and Other Poems , which he signed as "a Bostonian". Fifty copies were made, which went totally unnoticed .

That same year, with poverty closing in on him, Poe had no choice but to enlist in the army, which he did under the name Edgar A. Perry . He initially served at Fort Independence in Boston Harbor and later at Fort Moultrie in South Carolina, where he was part of the crew of the brig Waltham and attained his first promotions. Two years later, he became Sergeant Major for Artillery.

With the intention of ending his military service early and enrolling at the Military Academy West Point, New York, to study and pursue a career, Poe decided to resume contact with his foster father . He needed his support to leave the service and enroll at West Point, having had no contact with his family for quite some time.

His foster father, however, still held reservations against him and took several months to reply , not even writing to inform him about the illness of his adoptive mother. Frances Allan died in February 1829, and Poe was finally allowed to visit his family. He reconciled with his foster father, who promised to support his admission to the academy in New York.

Thus, after finding a replacement, Poe left the military service, and before heading to New York, he spent some time in Baltimore with his father's family . There, he wrote his second collection of poems: Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems , published in 1829.

This second work, centered on an astronomical anecdote by Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) and the Quran’s description of paradise, contains the longest poem Poe ever wrote . It received scant attention and mostly negative reviews, with the exception of writer, editor, and critic John Neal (1793-1876), who gave Poe "the very first words of encouragement I ever remember to have heard", as he himself defined it years later.

Poe finally arrived at West Point in 1830 and enrolled as a cadet . That same year, his foster father married Louisa Patterson, which greatly displeased Poe. His reproaches over this and illegitimate children ultimately estranged Poe from his foster father, who finally decided to disown him.

The life of a writer

Edgar Allan Poe did not last long at the West Point Academy. By 1830, he was determined to be expelled and pursue a life as a writer . Thus, he did everything possible to be court-martialed and dishonorably discharged, which he achieved in less than a year.

In February 1831, while in New York, Poe published his third book, simply called Poems . The funding for this volume came from his former fellow peers at the military academy, each contributing 75 cents to the project.

The book was artfully labeled as a "second edition" , since it contained the same long poems from his previous two books, along with six other unpublished works. It was dedicated "To the US Corps of Cadets".

Poe, however, did not stay much longer in New York, as his older brother was seriously ill due to complications derived from alcoholism . In March 1831, he returned to Baltimore and accompanied his brother until his death, in August of the same year.

While in Baltimore, Poe began to move away from poetry and made his early attempts at writing short stories . Times were tough for writers: newspapers and publications were abundant but fleeting, paid little and often delayed, and there was no international copyright law to prevent American publishers from releasing unauthorized copies of British authors rather than support local talent. To make matters worse, the economic crisis of 1837 complicated the situation even further.

The "Panic of 1837" was one of the most severe economic depressions in US history, comparable to the Great Depression of 1929. It started during the initial weeks of Martin Van Buren's (1782-1862) presidency when, in response to certain measures of the previous government, banks announced that they would no longer make their payments in gold and silver coins. This led to a speculative fever followed by a five-year economic depression, during which many banks went bankrupt and unemployment soared.

These circumstances forced Poe to beg for the payment of his works and live in a state of constant economic uncertainty. Still, his prose brought him his first successes . While he was working on what came to be his only theatrical piece, Politian , his first short stories saw the light of day: the weekly periodical Baltimore Saturday Visiter awarded a prize in 1833 to his short story "MS. Found in a Bottle", which opened a space for him in the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond.

Initially, his role in the periodical was that of contributor: he published "Metzengerstein", considered his first horror tale , followed by "Berenice", which was so shocking that the editors received numerous protest letters from readers. Immediately after, Poe became an editor.

On September 22, 1835, Poe married his cousin on his father’s side, Virginia Clem. He was 26 years old, and she was only 13. By all indications, Poe was a loving and affectionate husband, though that same year he began with his drinking problems . In fact, his sporadic but publicly embarrassing bouts of drinking led to his dismissal from the Southern Literary Messenger in 1837.

Once again, Poe decided to try his luck in New York.

The prolific years

Poe devoted the following years to producing some of his greatest works . In 1838, his only complete novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket , was published in New York, which was highly acclaimed. This work is considered the source of inspiration for Moby Dick , by Herman Melville (1819-1891) .

A year later, Poe and his wife moved to Philadelphia, where Burton's Gentleman's Magazine offered him the position of assistant editor . It was in this publication that his tales "William Wilson" and "The Fall of the House of Usher" appeared, the latter being one of his most famous short stories. Many of these tales were compiled in 1840 in his first published collection: Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque , which received mixed reviews and did not sell well.

That same year, Poe was determined to start his own magazine that was to be called The Penn or The Stylus . He even bought advertising space for it in Philadelphia's Saturday Evening Post , but he would never get his project off the ground.

In 1841 Poe resigned from Burton's Gentleman's Magazine and secured a position at the prestigious Graham's Magazine as a writer and co-editor. There, he published "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", regarded as the first detective story in history .

Around this period, he wrote other prominent short stories that appeared in various publications, such as "The Tell-Tale Heart", "The Black Cat", "The Pit and the Pendulum", and "The Gold-Bug". With the latter, he won a $100 prize from Philadelphia's Dollar Newspaper , bringing him considerable fame in the literary circuit.

In 1842, life took a turn for the worse for Poe. Virginia, his wife, showed the first signs of tuberculosis, which would ultimately claim her life.

The Raven and death of Virginia

Virginia's illness progressed quickly, and Poe faced his wife's health problems with desperation . He began to drink again, and sought better and more stable opportunities. It was thus that Poe approached the Whig Party and the presidency of John Tyler (1790-1862), thanks to the mediation of his friend Frederick Thomas.

Poe aimed for a position in the US Customs Service, but he missed his scheduled interview, citing illness . It is possible that he may have been grappling with alcohol-related issues. Although he was granted a second interview, the available positions had already been filled.

In 1844, Poe resigned from the magazines and decided to return to New York, where he briefly worked as assistant editor for the New York Mirror , run by N. P. Willis, who became his close friend for the remainder of his life. That year he published "The Balloon-Hoax" in The Sun , and the following year, a preview of what was to become his most famous poem: "The Raven", in the New York Mirror .

"The Raven" is a lengthy narrative poem about a mourning lover grieving over the death of his beloved Leonore who receives in his chamber a stealthy visit from a raven at midnight. The bird, perched just out of his reach, continuously evokes his suffering with its cawing, which seems to say "nevermore":

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor. "Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee Respite—respite and nepenthe, from thy memories of Lenore! Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

Following its publication in 1845, "The Raven" was replicated in numerous US newspapers, including the New York Tribune , Broadway Journal , and the Southern Literary Messenger , where Poe had formerly worked. The immediate success of this work made its author a nationally renowned writer , though he only received $9 in payment for its publication.

With fame also came the attention of other authors, many of whom Poe had antagonistic relationships with . His literary rivalry with Rufus W. Griswold (1812-1857) is well-known. They even competed for the love of fellow poet Frances Sargent Locke Osgood (1811-1850). Poe had a brief affair with her, to which his dying wife did not object. However, Frances' indiscretions regarding the affair generated a certain scandal in the literary circuit.

Poe then moved from the New York Mirror to the Broadway Journal , and after the disappearance of this journal in 1846, the writer, his mother-in-law and his dying wife relocated to a house in Fordham, in the Bronx , known today as the "Poe Cottage". There, in the master bedroom, Virginia Clemm Poe succumbed to tuberculosis on January 30, 1847.

Poe’s final years

Poe never recovered from Virginia's death. His behavior following the death of his wife became erratic and self-destructive . Throughout 1847, he courted poet Sarah Helen Whitman, with whom he had brief and failed engagement. He also had close but platonic relationships with Annie Richmond and Sarah Anna Lewis, to whom he dedicated poems and from whom he often received financial help.

In 1848, he published "Eureka", a truly remarkable prose poem , considered a stroke of genius by some and described as absurd by others, in which he sought out to explain the universe from a philosophical perspective. Dedicated to Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), it revisited old obsessions from his youth, like astronomy, occultism, and metaphysics.

The following year, Poe traveled south, and wandered through Philadelphia and Richmond , where he eventually became engaged to the then widow Elmira Royster. They spent a last happy summer together, in the company of childhood friends and poet Susan Archer Telley, with whom he had a short-lived friendship. Yet, in numerous letters and writings he expressed his longing for death.

Finally, in October 1849, Poe was found in the streets of Baltimore, in a state of delirium and great distress . He was taken to hospital, where he died on October 7, for reasons that remain unknown. He was forty years old and was in such a dire condition that he was unable to explain what had happened to him.

During his agony, Poe is said to have repeated the name "Reynolds", and his final words were "Lord, help my poor soul". Newspapers at the time reported his death with euphemisms like "cerebral inflammation" or "congestion of the brain" , often used for alcohol-related deaths.

Legacy of Edgar Allan Poe

Upon the announcement of his death, his long-time rival Rufus W. Griswold published a long and slanted obituary in the New York Tribune under the pseudonym Ludwig , portraying Poe as a lunatic, a nocturnal wanderer who muttered curses in madness. The obituary began with "Edgar Allan Poe is dead. He died in Baltimore the day before yesterday. This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it".

That was not Griswald's last attempt to tarnish Poe's memory. In 1850, he published along with James Russell Lowell and Nathaniel Parker Lewis a compilation of Poe's works, accompanied by a biographical note written by Griswold himself, in which he portrayed Poe as a depraved psychopath and drug addict. Although most claims in this biography were complete and malicious fabrications, which many of Poe's acquaintances denounced , this controversial image of the writer gained popularity among his readers and among those who assumed that, given the morbid themes of his tales, the author must therefore be an evil man himself. A more objective biography of Poe did not appear until 1875.

Poe’s funeral was a simple rite, attended by few people, and he was buried in the courtyard of the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Baltimore. His grave initially only bore the "No. 80" identification , since the marble gravestone with the epitaph his nephew Nelson had paid for was lost in an accident.

Years later, in 1873, poet Paul Hamilton Hayne visited his resting place and published an outraged article about the undignified condition of the grave, which prompted the community to raise funds for a reburial. On October 1, 1875, Poe was reburied in a privileged site in front of the church , with a monument bearing his name, alongside the bodies of his wife and mother-in-law.

Poe's short stories and poems, obsessed with grief, melancholy, and crime, were highly praised by French poets Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) and Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898), to whom Poe owes international fame. Since then, his works have served as a unique source of inspiration for many other great writers, such as Horacio Quiroga (1878-1937), Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), and Julio Cortázar (1914-1984).

Today, Edgar Allan Poe is regarded as one of the great masters of the short story and a seminal figure in American literature . In addition, he is the father of the detective fiction genre and the horror tale, as well as a prominent thinker on literary theory. His short stories have been widely translated and adapted to film, television, animation, and even video games.

Among Edgar Allan Poe's major and most renowned works are:

• The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838 novel)
• "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839 short story)
• "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841 short story)
• "The Pit and the Pendulum" (1842 short story)
• "The Black Cat" (1843 short story)
• "The Tell-Tale Heart" (1843 short story)
• "The Gold-Bug" (1843 short story)
• "The Purloined Letter" (1844 short story)
• "The Raven" (1845 poem)
• "The Philosophy of Composition" (1846 essay)
• "Eureka" (1848 prose poem or essay)

Referencias

• Barzun, J., Cestre, C. y Mabbott, T. (2023). “Edgar Allan Poe (American writer)”. The Encyclopaedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/
• Educ.ar. (2022). Edgar Allan Poe, el inventor del miedo. https://www.educ.ar/
• Reagan Wilson, C. y Ferris, W. (eds.). (1989). “Edgar Allan Poe”. Encyclopedia of Southern Culture . University of North Carolina Press.
• The Poe Museum. (2023). Poe Biography. https://poemuseum.org/

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• Virginia Woolf
• Brothers Grimm
• Jorge Luis Borges

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The Poe Museum

Richmond, VA

Poe’s Complete Works

 Below is a list of the complete works of Edgar Allan Poe. Click on a title to read the full text. 

Short Stories

• The Angel of the Odd
• The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
• The Assignation (The Visionary)
• The Balloon Hoax
• The Black Cat
• Bon-Bon (The Bargain Lost)
• The Cask of Amontillado
• The Colloquy of Monos and Una
• The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion (The Destruction of the World)
• A Decided Loss (Loss of Breath)
• A Descent into the Maelström
• The Devil in the Belfry
• Diddling Considered as One of the Exact Sciences
• The Domain of Arnheim (The Landscape Garden )
• The Duc de L’Omelette
• Epimanes (Four Beasts in One) (The Homocameleopard)   
• The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
• The Fall of the House of Usher
• The Gold-Bug
• Hans Phaall — A Tale (The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall)
• How to Write a Blackwood Article (The Psyche Zenobia)
• The Imp of the Perverse
• The Island of the Fay
• Landor’s Cottage  
• The Light-House
• The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq
• The Man of the Crowd
• The Man that was Used Up
• The Masque of the Red Death
• Mellonta Tauta
• Mesmeric Revelation
• Metzengerstein
• Morning on the Wissahiccon (The Elk)  
• MS. found in a Bottle (Manuscript found in a Bottle)
• The Murders in the Rue Morgue
• The Mystery of Marie Roget
• Mystification (Von Jung)
• Never Bet the Devil Your Head
• The Oblong Box
• The Oval Portrait (Life in Death) 
• Peter Pendulum, the Business Man
• The Pit and the Pendulum
• The Power of Words
• The Premature Burial
• The Purloined Letter
• The Scythe of Time
• Shadow — A Fable
• Silence — A Fable (Siope — A Fable)
• Some Words with a Mummy
• The Spectacles
• The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether
• A Tale of Jerusalem
• A Tale of the Ragged Mountains
• The Tell-Tale Heart
• Thou Art the Man
• The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade
• A Succession of Sundays (Three Sundays in a Week)
• Von Kempelen and His Discovery
• Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling
• William Wilson
• X-ing a Paragrab
• An Acrostic (From an Album)
• Alone (From an Album Alone)    (“From childhood’s hour I have not been… “)
• Annabel Lee
• Bridal Ballad (Song of the Newly-Wedded)
• Beloved Physician
• Catholic Hymn 
• The Coliseum
• The Conqueror Worm
• The Divine Right of Kings
• The Doomed City (The City in the Sea)
• A Dream Within a Dream
• Evening Star
• The Happiest Day
• The Haunted Palace
• Impromptu [To Kate Carol]
• Irene (The Sleeper)
• [Lines on Joe Locke]
• Lines Written in an Album (To Elizabeth) (To F——s S. O——d)
• O, Tempora! O, Mores!
•  Preface (Romance) 
• Song of Triumph
• Sonnet (An Enigma)
• Sonnet — Silence
• Sonnet — To Science
• Sonnet — To Zante
• Spiritual Song
• Stanzas (“In youth I have known one…”) 
• Stanzas  [To F. S. O.]
• To —  (“The bowers whereat …”)
• To —— (“Sleep on, sleep on, another hour …”)
• To — (Song) 
• To Helen (“Helen, thy beauty is to me…”)
• To Helen (“I saw thee once — once only…”)
• To Her Whose Name is Written Below  (A Valentine) 
• To M— (Alone) (“O! I care not that my earthly lot…”)
• To Margaret
• To Mary (To One Departed ) 
• To Marie Louise
• To My Mother
• To One in Paradise (To One Beloved), (To Ianthe in Heaven)
• To ——[Violet Vane]
• Spirits of the Dead
• The Valley of Unrest (The Valley Nis)

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Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer of primarily poetry and short stories that explored themes of death, regret, and lost love. Read the overview below to gain an understanding of the author and his work and explore the previews of analysis and criticism that invite further interpretation.

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Edgar allan poe topic overview.

"Poe, Edgar Allan (1809-1849), An Introduction to." Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism Volume 211, Gale, 2009.

Known for his keen intellect and vivid, often macabre imagination, Edgar Allan Poe is regarded by many scholars as one of the most groundbreaking authors of early-nineteenth-century America. Although Poe is remembered by most readers as the author of such stories as "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Fall of the House of Usher," critics recognize him for the versatility and range of his talents.

A number of commentators have credited Poe with inventing the modem detective story; indeed, many of his principal techniques, particularly his use of deductive reasoning to elucidate the complexities of criminal behavior, form the foundation of the crime genre. At the same time, Poe's in-depth explorations of the interior lives of his characters helped pave the way for psychological realism, inspiring a number of later fiction writers, among them Fyodor Dostoevsky. Poe's critical writings, notably those on the relationship between philosophical principles and artistic style, also influenced the aesthetic theories of Charles Baudelaire, Stephane Mallarme, and other members of the French symbolist movement.

In spite of his far-reaching impact, Poe has also had his share of detractors over the years: Henry James was intensely critical of Poe's work, while T. S. Eliot famously dismissed his writings as "pre-adolescent." The second half of the twentieth century witnessed a reevaluation of Poe's legacy, however, as modem critics and theorists began to recognize his profound effect on modem literature and thought.

Biographical Information

Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston on January 19, 1809, the second son of David Poe Jr. and Elizabeth Arnold Poe, both stage actors. The family lived in abject poverty and moved frequently during Poe's first years, during which time his parents pursued acting engagements in New York, Maryland, and Virginia. Poe's father abandoned the family when Poe was still a small child, and his mother died in Richmond, Virginia, in December 1811. Shortly after his mother's death, Poe was adopted by John Allan, a wealthy Richmond merchant, and his wife, Frances. In 1815 the young boy went with the Allans to Great Britain, living in Scotland and London for the next five years. After returning to Richmond in 1820, Poe attended private schools, where he excelled in literature, classics, and oratory; he also began to write poetry.

In spite of his academic accomplishments, Poe remained relatively isolated. Scholar Eric W. Carlson has argued that Poe's humble origins remained a source of shame throughout his life and that because of his background he never gained acceptance among Richmond's social elite. In 1826, Poe became a student at the University of Virginia, studying classical and modern languages. Although his adoptive father paid Poe's tuition and lodging, he refused him additional funds for books and other basic expenses. To cover his living costs, Poe turned to gambling, incurring massive debts that forced him to withdraw from the university. Unable to repair his fractured relationship with Allan, Poe moved to Boston and enlisted in the army. He published his first book of verse, Tamerlane and Other Poems: By a Bostonian (1827), around this time. A second poetry collection, Al Aaraaf Tamerlane, and Minor Poems , was published in 1829. A year later Poe, intent on launching a military career, enrolled at the United States Military Academy at West Point; financial difficulties continued to plague him, however, and he abandoned his training after only six months. His third collection of verse, Poems, By Edgar A. Poe , came out in 1831.

After living briefly in New York City, Poe settled in Baltimore, where he moved in with his aunt, Maria Clemm. In Baltimore, Poe began writing short stories, publishing several of them in the Philadelphia Saturday Courier in 1832. In 1833, his story "MS. Found in a Bottle" won first prize in a contest promoted by the Baltimore Saturday Visitor . Although the prize earned Poe $50, it ultimately did little to alleviate his financial struggles, and John Allan's death in 1834 failed to provide Poe with an adequate inheritance. Desperate for a steady income, Poe accepted an offer to become a staff writer and editor for the Southern Literary Messenger , a new magazine based in Richmond. In 1835 he moved to Richmond with his aunt and her 12-year-old daughter, Virginia Clemm. Poe married Virginia a year later, shortly before her 14th birthday.

According to most biographical accounts, Poe thrived during his tenure at the Messenger ; he published more than 80 essays, poems, and reviews in the periodical, while gradually attracting a sizeable readership. In 1837, he resigned from his editorship, although he continued to contribute fiction and criticism to the magazine. For the next year Poe lived with his family in New York before relocating to Philadelphia in early 1838. During this period he published his only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838), as well as several important short stories, including "Ligeia" (1838) and "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839). In 1839 he took a position as the editor and principal literary critic of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine ; he was fired a year later, however, after attempting to launch his own rival magazine.

Poe's first book of short fiction, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque , was published in 1840. Over the next few years Poe published two additional story collections, The Prose Romances of Edgar A. Poe, No. 1. Containing the Murders in the Rue Morgue, and The Man That Was Used Up (1843) and Tales by Edgar A. Poe (1845), as well as his most significant book of poetry, The Raven and Other Poems (1845). Virginia contracted tuberculosis during this time; she died in January 1847. Poe's own health began to deteriorate, his condition exacerbated by heavy alcohol abuse.

In the remaining two years of his life, Poe was romantically involved with a series of women and was briefly engaged to the poet Sarah Helen Whitman, but their relationship ended abruptly in late 1848. That year saw the publication of Eureka: A Prose Poem , the final work published in Poe's lifetime. His struggle to earn a living and refrain from drinking continued to take its toll. He managed to place essays, stories, and poems in various magazines and delivered lectures on poetry. Poe died in Baltimore on October 7, 1849. Although biographers speculate that his death was alcohol related, the exact cause remains unknown. A posthumous collection of prose writings, The Literati . . . Together with Marginalia, Suggestions, and Essays (1850), was published a year after his death.

Major Works

To modern commentators Poe remains best known for his short stories, almost all of which were collected in three volumes published during his lifetime: Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque , The Prose Romances of Edgar A. Poe , and Tales by Edgar A. Poe . Many scholars divide Poe's short fiction into two categories: horror tales and detective stories. Poe's horror tales typically revolve around characters who have reached states of extreme alienation, terror, and madness and often contain elements of the supernatural. In "The Tell-Tale Heart" (1843), a murderer is plagued by the persistent echo of his victim's heartbeat, compelling him to confess his crime; "The Black Cat" (1843) features a protagonist who becomes obsessed with killing his beloved pet cat; the narrator of "The Cask of Amontillado" (1846), tormented by the "thousand injuries" inflicted upon him by an old rival, achieves his long-awaited vengeance by burying his victim alive in a brick tomb. The sense of menace in other stories is far more subtle. In "Some Words with a Mummy" (1845), a revivified Egyptian mummy, speaking to a group of modern scientists, offers an ominous indictment of nineteenth-century democracy. The narrator of "Ligeia" (1838), distressed by the death of his first wife, imagines her soul's resurrection in the body of his second wife. "Ligeia" is also noteworthy in that it contains the poem "The Conqueror Worm," a dark vision of the power and inevitability of death.

Poe's detective stories concern the complex, sometimes misleading relationship between human reasoning and empirical reality. Characterized by Poe himself as tales of "ratiocination," these stories revolve around crimes so strange and inexplicable that they prove nearly impossible to solve. The best known of these works include "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841), "The Mystery of Marie Roget" (1842), and "The Purloined Letter" (1845). These three stories feature the character C. Auguste Dupin, an amateur sleuth whose powers of imagination and deductive reasoning enable him to recognize crucial details that elude more conventional police inspectors. A number of scholars have asserted that Dupin became the prototype of the modem fictional detective and served as the model for such characters as Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot.

In addition to his fiction, Poe authored a number of important poems over the course of his career. Although his poems are not widely read today, several are still familiar to modem readers; among the most famous are "To Helen" (1831), "Lenore" (1843), and "The Raven" (1845). Poe's critical writings, in particular his review of Nathaniel Hawthorne's story collction Twice-Told Tales , also remain noteworthy among scholars. The commentary, first published in April 1842, has played a pivotal role in the field of Hawthorne criticism. In the 1846 essay "The Philosophy of Composition," Poe undertakes an in-depth analysis of his own artistic methods. "The Poetic Principle," first delivered as a lecture in 1848 and later included in the posthumous volume The Literati, offers an invaluable exposition of Poe's aesthetic philosophy, notably the idea that the ultimate aim of art is art itself, independent of social or political contexts. This idea influenced European aesthetic theories of the late nineteenth century and became the foundation of the French symbolist movement.

More Articles

The motive for murder in the cask of amontillado by edgar allan poe.

Baraban examines the reason for Montresor's murder of Fortunato in "The Cask of Amontillado," suggesting that Fortunato "is being punished for his arrogance and for insulting someone who is equal or superior to him."

The Art of Incorporative Exclusion: The Masque of the Red Death

Freedman surveys such themes as narrative self-reflexivity, the primal fear of blood, and the conflict between art and reality in "The Masque of the Red Death."

Poe in Love: Pedophilia, Morbidity, and the Logic of Slavery

Coviello discusses racial and sexual overtones in Poe's body of work.

House of Mirrors: Edgar Allan Poe's the Fall of the House of Usher

Timmerman describes Poe's attempt to unify Enlightenment thinking with romanticism in "The Fall of the House of Usher," and observes similar concerns with cosmic unity in the prose poem Eureka.

The Function of Terror in the Work of Edgar Allan Poe

Garrison identifies aspects of "artistic integrity" in Poe's body of work. Garrison suggests that Poe's stories employ terror as a "vehicle for the sentiment of Poesy."

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Are you watching Wednesday on Netflix ?? I love the Edgar Allan Poe references in the show. Poe actually DID put hidden messages in his poems and stories. His poem A Valentine is an example. Poe even teaches the reader how to solve secret messages in The Gold Bug . Enjoy!

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Poe wrote many stories on many different topics. If you don't know where to start, you can browse short summaries of Edgar Allan Poe stories , so you can find something that interests you. Don't worry, I don't give away the endings!!

This site makes it easy for you read Poe's stories. Poe knew several languages and had quite a large vocabulary. Poe's works are not hard to read but sometimes he uses obscure words or references that the average user may not know. Because of this, I've created an ever growing wordlist containing many of these words and their definitions. When a word in the wordlist appears in any story, it becomes hyperlinked to its definition.

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Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘For Annie’ Heads to Auction

L ike so many others, Edgar Allan Poe moved to New York City for the promise of work. “He was a great New Yorker,” says Richard Austin, Global Head of Books and Manuscripts at Sotheby’s. “The number of addresses he lived at during this time is like how so many of us move around to different neighborhoods.”

It’s easy to imagine the author walking through the modern streets of Greenwich Village, which was already a bustling urban area during Poe’s time in the 1840s. Even then, the city was inspiring to artists. It there that he wrote some of his most famous works, like “The Raven” and “The Cask of Amontillado.” As he wrote of New York in a letter in 1844, “The city is brimfull [sic] of all kinds of legitimate liveliness – the life of money-making, and the life of pleasure.” But Poe also predicted the city’s growth and spread as he looked at the cliffs and trees near what is now Roosevelt Island, writing, “In twenty years, or thirty at farthest, we shall see here nothing more romantic than shipping, warehouses, and wharves.” He was right about the development but wrong, perhaps, about the lack of romance in it.

“The city is brimfull of all kinds of legitimate liveliness – the life of money-making, and the life of pleasure.”

When Poe moved to a small cottage in what is now The Bronx, he did so in the hopes of helping cure his wife Virginia of tuberculosis. Today the cottage has been preserved as a museum with a small front yard but the city has grown all around it with bodegas and high-rise buildings. In Poe’s time, he could look out from his porch and see farmland all around him. “It’s a window into New York’s past,” Austin says, and Poe’s as well.

Poe’s final and most difficult years were spent in this Bronx cottage. He, Virginia and his mother-in-law moved to the cottage in 1846. During this time, Poe was a struggling writer living in relative poverty. Peter Ackroyd wrote in his biography Poe: A Life Cut Short that Poe’s mother-in-law foraged greens along the country roads and even dug up turnips meant for cattle to keep everyone fed. Despite moving to this place outside the city, Poe’s wife died a year later.

This tumultuous time in Poe’s biography was an important period artistically. “His work was so much impacted by his life circumstances,” says Austin. “He’d be inspired by a woman he met or in the depths of despair, and he would write.” Poe wrote “The Bells,” “Annabel Lee,” “Ulalume” and the poem “ For Annie ” while living in the cottage. The titular bells of his poem are thought by some to be inspired by the tolling of the Fordham University church’s bells which were located near his home. “Annabel Lee,” about a couple so in love that the woman is killed out of spite, is a poem of grief, written after Virginia’s death. Austin noted that even among Poe’s notably gloomy oeuvre there is a particular focus on death in his work he produced in these last years.

Some of his final works were written both for publication and as a literary bouquet of roses. He sent them to women he courted after his wife’s death, most obviously “For Annie,” which was written for Nancy “Annie” L. Richmond. He sent her a copy of the poem after he’d sold it for publication, telling her he thought it was among his best works but might be mistaken, “so I wish to know what my Annie truly thinks of them.” On 26 June 2024, an autograph manuscript of the poem from the Library of Dr. Rodney P. Swantko is being auctioned by Sotheby’s for the first time since 2009.

Writing “For Annie” may have been a somewhat calculated move, Austin says. “Like many New Yorkers, he’s thinking of his next step.” Poe’s financial situation was particularly dire in his last years and he was likely aware that he needed another patron or relationship to support him. Poe is not thought of as a particularly autobiographical writer, but it’s clear that his life – and the places he lived – had a great influence on his work.

Perhaps it’s for this reason that so many cities have sought to claim him as their own. There are Edgar Allan Poe museums in Richmond, Baltimore and Philadelphia, as well as the one in New York City. But when he died under mysterious circumstances on a trip to Baltimore in 1849, home was still the cottage in The Bronx.

The city has changed as Poe predicted it would, but modern Poe aficionados could learn a lot about the writer by visiting the places where he lived and imagining themselves into New York City as it existed in the 1840s. The city has grown, the farmlands have been pushed even farther out, but it’s still the urban heart of the United States where so many talented artists have come, dreaming of creating work that is appreciated long after they are gone.

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