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Edgar Allan Poe Biography

(1809–1849)

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Short Stories
The Assignation
Berenice
The Black Cat

The Cask of Amontillado
A Descent into the Maelstrom
The Devil in the Belfry
The Domain of Arnheim
Eleonora
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
The Fall of the House of Usher
The Gold-Bug
The Imp of the Perverse
The Island of the Fay
Landor's Cottage
The Masque of the Red Death
Mesmeric Revelation
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
The Oblong Box
The Pit and the Pendulum
The Premature Burial
The Purloined Letter
Silence -- a Fable
The Tell-Tale Heart
The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherezade
Von Kempelen and his Discovery
William Wilson
Ligeia
Morella
A Tale of the Ragged Mountains
The Spectacles
King Pest
Three Sundays in a Week
The Angel of the Odd
Lionizing
X-ing a Paragrab
Metzengerstein
The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether
How to Write a Blackwood Article
A Predicament
Mystification
Diddling
Mellonta Tauta
The Duc de L'Omelette
Loss of Breath
The Business Man
The Landscape Garden
Maelzel's Chess-Player
The Power of Words
The Colloquy of Monos and Una
The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion
Shadow
A Tale of Jerusalem
The Sphinx
Hop-Frog
The Man of the Crowd
Never Bet the Devil Your Head
Thou Art the Man
Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling
Bon Bon
Some Words with a Mummy
Poems
A Dream
A Dream Within A Dream
A Paean
A Valentine
Al Aaraaf
Alone
An Enigma
Annabel Lee
Bridal Ballad
Dreamland
Dreams
Eldorado
Eulalie
Evening Star
Fairyland
For Annie
Hymn
Hymn to Aristogeiton and Harmodius
Imitation
In Youth I Have Known One
Israfel
Lenore
Romance
Silence
Song
Sonnet: To Science
Spirits of the Dead
Tamerlane
The Bells
The City in the Sea
The Coliseum
The Conqueror Worm
The Forest Reverie
The Happiest Day
The Haunted Palace
The Lake
The Raven
The Sleeper
The Valley of Unrest
The Village Street
To - -
To F
To Frances S. Osgood
To Helen
To Isadore
To Marie Louise (Shew)
To My Mother
To One in Paradise
To The River
To Zante
Ulalume

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(born January 19, 1809, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.—died October 7, 1849, Baltimore, Maryland) 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.

Life

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.