Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) (3234)

Poe was born in Boston on Jan. 19, 1809. His father deserted the family and his mother died before Poe was three years old. John Allan, a tobacco exporter in Richmond and his wife Frances raised Poe as a foster child, but never legally adopted him. From 1815 to 1820, the family lived in England, and Poe attended a private school near London, where he did well in his studies.

In 1826, Poe entered the University of Virginia, where he was an excellent student. But because his foster father sent him barely enough money to live, Poe gambled to try to win money for books and clothing. His resulting debts caused Allan to withdraw him from the university. Allan then wanted Poe to study law, but Poe determined to follow a literary career. After the two quarreled in March, 1827, Poe left home for Boston, where he later enlisted in the Army as «Edgar A. Perry».

In 1830, Poe entered the U.S. Military Academy in an effort to gain Allan's good will. But Frances Allan had died in 1829 and when Allan decided to remarry in 1830, Poe concluded he would never receive an inheritance. So he broke regulations to force his dismissal from West Point.

Poe's career began with two volumes of poetry, «Tamerlane and Other Poems» (1827) and «Minor Poems» (1829).

In 1833, Poe's story «MS. Found in a Bottle» won a $50 prize and the friendship of John P. Kennedy who helped Poe to get a job with the «Southern Literary Messenger». In 1836 Poe married his cousin Virginia Clemm, who was then not quite 14 years old. In 1837 he resigned from the magazine and moved to New York City in. Then he moved to Philadelphia in 1838, and edited two magazines there. Despite his success as an editor and writer, however, he was so underpaid that he and his family often went without enough food.

From 1844 until his death, Poe lived in New York City. During the mid-1840's, he wrote and edited as much as 15 hours a day and enjoyed a growing reputation as a short-story writer. 1845 was his best year – 12 stories published in «Tales» and 30 poems in «The Raven and Other Poems». «The Raven» is Poe's best-known poem and one of the most famous works in American literature.

The last years of Poe's life were marked by tragedy. His wife died of tuberculosis in 1847 after five years of illness. This intolerable sorrow led Poe to occasional drinking to ease his despair.

In 1849, Poe became engaged to marry the widowed Mrs. Sarah Royster Shelton, his boyhood sweetheart. On his way to bring Mrs. Clemm to the wedding, Poe stopped in Baltimore. On October, 3 Poe was found lying outside a voting place. He died in a hospital four days later, without regaining consciousness.

Poe had a great interest in unnatural things of one sort or another which are described in his stories. His short stories, such as "The Masque of the Red Death", "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "Murders in the Rue Morgue" create real and fantastic worlds. Edgar Poe is considered the father of modern detective story.

Poe's longest work of fiction is the novelette «The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym» (1838). Its earliest chapters recount a series of sea adventures in Daniel Defoe’s style.

Edgar Poe was a skillful poet. His poems are very melodious and dramatic in their effects. "Israel" is Poe's poetic apology for himself, while "Annabel Lee" mourns the death of a beautiful girl, a recurring subject in Poe's writing. His poems are rich with musical phrases, rhythm and repetition of sounds. They are full of images that are not easy to forget.

For many years critics disagreed on Poe's place in literature. Up to World War I, he was admired mainly for his romantic lyric poems, his tales of terror, and his clever detective stories. Since that time scholars have become more concerned with Poe's symbolic poems and tales, those in which mystery, atmosphere, and extraordinary events and characters represent the interplay of con­flicting feelings and values.

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