Essay/Term paper: Edgar allan poe

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Biography Term Papers

Edgar Allan Poe


Poe, Edgar Allan, known as a poet and critic but most famous as the first master
of the short-story form, especially tales of the mysterious and macabre. The
literary merits of Poe's writings have been debated since his death, but his
works have remained popular and many major American and European writers have
professed their artistic debt to him. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Poe was
orphaned in his early childhood and was raised by John Allan, a successful
businessman of Richmond, Virginia. Taken by the Allan family to England at the
age of six, Poe was placed in a private school. Upon returning to the United
States in 1820, he continued to study in private schools. He attended the
University of Virginia for a year, but in 1827 his foster father, displeased by
the young man's drinking and gambling, refused to pay his debts and forced him
to work as a clerk. Poe, disliking his new duties intensely, quit the job, thus
estranging Allan, and went to Boston. There his first book, Tamerlane and Other
Poems (1827), was published anonymously. Shortly afterward Poe enlisted in the
U.S. Army and served a two-year term. In 1829 his second volume of verse, Al
Aaraaf, was published, and he effected a reconciliation with Allan, who secured
him an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy. After only a few months at the
academy Poe was dismissed for neglect of duty, and his foster father disowned
him permanently. Poe's third book, Poems, appeared in 1831, and the following
year he moved to Baltimore, where he lived with his aunt and her 11-year-old
daughter, Virginia Clemm. The following year his tale "A MS. Found in a Bottle"
won a contest sponsored by the Baltimore Saturday Visitor. From 1835 to 1837 Poe
was an editor of the Southern Literary Messenger. In 1836 he married his young
cousin. Throughout the next decade, much of which was marred by his wife's long
illness, Poe worked as an editor for various periodicals in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, and in New York City. In 1847 Virginia died and Poe himself became
ill; his disastrous addiction to liquor and his alleged use of drugs, recorded
by contemporaries, may have contributed to his early death.