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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.