Edgar
Poe was Born January 19, 1809, in Boston, Massachusetts. He grew up with two
other siblings, his father abandoned the family and his mother died the
following year. Poe was an orphan who was taken in by John and Frances Allan
who lived in Richmond, Virginia. He was renamed Edgar Allen Poe; however, he
was never officially adopted. Later in Poe’s life, he attended the University
of Virginia, which was short lived. His
father stopped sending funds for him to attend the school. In order to cover
the costs of the University he turned to gambling, which got him into debt. The
tensions over this incident lead to Poe leaving the Allen’s. The beginning of Poe’s career was his first
short story, Tamerlane and Other Poems, which was published in 1827. After this in
1830, he published a short story containing several story’s called Tales of
the Grotesque and Arabesque.
He produced a few more pieces up until 1845 when he
wrote his most famous poems, “The Raven.”
Poe worked on many different types of pieces but his main theme in
stories or poems was loss and death. Edgar Allen Poe died October 7, 1849, at the age of 40. His death was a mystery; some doctors thought
he died of "congestion
of the brain." However; Poe’s actually cause of death is still not sure.
Poe was a talented writer who produced many spectacle pieces that are still
studied today.
