
Biography of Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, editor, and literary critic. He is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and American literature as a whole, and he was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story. Poe is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre and is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.
Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts. 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, he moved to Boston and enlisted in the United States Army. His first collection of poems, Tamerlane, and Other Poems, was published that year. In 1829, he published a second collection entitled Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems. 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, Maryland.
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 fourteen 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, a poet, and a 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 Mallarmé and Rimbaud claimed him as a literary precursor. 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.
Short stories by Edgar Allan Poe
- A Descent Into the Maelstrom
- A Predicament
- A Tale of Jerusalem
- A Tale of the Ragged Mountains
- A Voyage to the Moon
- Berenice
- Bon-Bon
- Diddling
- Eleonora
- Four Beasts in One
- Hop-Frog
- How to Write a Blackwood Article
- King Pest
- Landor's Cottage
- Ligeia
- Lionizing
- Loss of Breath
- Mellonta Tauta
- Mesmeric Revelation
- Metzengerstein
- Morella
- MS. Found in a Bottle
- Mystification
- Never Bet the Devil Your Head
- Shadow
- Silence -- a Fable
- Some Words with a Mummy
- The Angel of the Odd
- The Assignation
- The Balloon Hoax
- The Black Cat
- The Business Man
- The Cask of Amontillado
- The Devil in the Belfry
- The Domain of Arnheim
- The Duc de L'Omelette
- 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
- The Landscape Garden
- The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq.
- The Man of the Crowd
- The Man That Was Used Up
- The Masque of the Red Death
- The Murders in the Rue Morgue
- The Mystery of Marie Roget
- The Oblong Box
- The Oval Portrait
- The Pit and the Pendulum
- The Power of Words
- The Premature Burial
- The Purloined Letter
- The Spectacles
- The Sphinx
- The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether
- The Tell-Tale Heart
- The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherezade
- Thou Art the Man
- 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
Essays by Edgar Allan Poe
Poems by Edgar Allan Poe
- "The Happiest Day"
- A Dream
- A Dream Within a Dream
- A Paean
- A Valentine
- Al Aaraaf
- Alone
- An Acrostic
- An Enigma
- Annabel Lee
- Bridal Ballad
- Dream-Land
- Dreamland
- Dreams
- Eldorado
- Evangeline
- Fairy-Land
- For Annie
- Israfel
- Lenore
- Lines on Ale
- Romance
- Sonnet—To Science
- Spirits of the Dead
- The Bells
- The City in the Sea
- The Conqueror Worm
- The Haunted Palace
- The Raven
- The Sleeper
- The Valley of Unrest
- To -- -- --. Ulalume: A Ballad
- To Helen
- To My Mother
- To One Departed
- To One in Paradise
- To The River