He was born January 19th, 1809. He was an American poet, editor, and literary critic - part of the American Romantic Movement. Poe's best known for his tales of mystery, spooky, and macabre stories. He's ones of the earliest American short story writers and is considered the inventor of the detective-fiction genre. Yeah, man. He was one of my favorite units in high school, I adored his short stories and his style.
He's also credited to contributing with the emergence of the sci-fi genre, which is definitely okay with me. In my mind he's still one of the most masterful writers to ever walk the Earth, then again he's one of my absolute heroes. He was one of the first people to try writing as a sole means of income, and thus had a bit of a difficult financial life.
He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and orphaned young when his mother died shortly after his father abandoned the family. Poe was taken in by Frances Allan of Richmond Virgina (which is a place I absolutely adore, I've been dying to go to his house that's there as a museum still). He attended University of Virginia but left after a semester due to a lack in funds, and also tried his point at enlisting in the US Army, but failed as an Officer Cadet at West Point.
His publishing career began with an anonymous collection of poems, Tamerlane and Other Poems. He then switched to prose and spent several years working for literary journals becoming known for his own style of criticism. He got moved to several cities. He married his 13 year old cousin, Virginia Clemm in 1835, but she died of TB in 1847 two years after his publication of The Raven.
On October 7, 1849 he died of an unknown cause, but it's most commonly contributed to alcohol, brain congestion, cholera, drugs, heart disease, rabies, suicide, tuberculosis, and other theories. The one a lot of people (whom I know) seem to say it was a alcohol related death, I'm still unconvinced of anything.
Poe along with his works are still largely in power due to films, television, literature, music. Pop culture eats his works up, because they are truly fantastic works of his time, but even of our time. Few people could even remotely be on the same level Poe was on in his lifetime.
Edgar Allan Poe may have been named after a character in Shakespeare's King Lear, as that was the play his parent's were working on before they died.
Some time to plug-in the great works which I adore, though there are many I have not had the time to check out by him. Even though I do have several volumes of his works. The list in no order: The Cask of Amontillado. The Premature Burial. The Pit and the Pendulum. Metzengerstein. The Black Cat. The Tell-Tale Heart. The Fall of the House of Usher. Murders in the Rue Morgue. Ligeia. The Masque of the Red Death. The Oval Portrait. The Purloined Letter.
Poems: Annabel Lee. The Conqueror Worm. The Haunted Palace. The Raven. Lenore.
Pic Credit: Pic Cred: http://www.yourenglishclass.com/art/TheRaven_Visual.jpg.
Info Cred: Wikipedia.com.
"Human good words, such as the sponge with water to suck firmly" Yay for no-sense-making bots?
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