{\b Edgar Allan Poe}.

{\b Date of Birth}.: 19 January 1809 

{\b Date of Death}.: 7 October 1849

{\b Works}.

US poet, critic and short story writer.

 Poe is best known for his macabre horror stories including The Fall of the 
House of Usher, The Gold Bug and The Black Cat (1842). His key poems include 
Lenore (1831), The Raven (1842), Ulalume (1847).  He also wrote some critical 
essays including The Philosophy of Composition (1846), Time and Space (1844) 
and The Poetic Principle (1850), and a novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon 
Pym (1838). 
Poe had a great influence on a number of writers including Arthur Conan Doyle 
and Jules Verne.

{\b Featured Works}.

'To Helen', 'Annabel Lee', 'The Bells', 'The Raven', 'Ulalume', 'The Haunted 
Palace', 'The Valley of Unrest', 'The Conqueror Worm', 'Dreamland', 
'Eldorado', 'For Annie', 'Lenore', 'Sonnet: To Science', 'Sonnet: Silence', 
'The Sleeper', 'Fairy-Land', 'Spirits of the Dead', 'Israfel', 'The City in 
the Sea', 'A Dream Within a Dream', 'To One in Paradise'.

{\b General Comment}.

Poe was born in Massachusetts, the son of travelling actors David and 
Elizabeth Arnold Poe. His mother died when he was two and his father was an 
alcoholic, so Poe went to live with a prosperous Scottish tobacco merchant, 
John Allan, in Richmond. Allan always refused to adopt Poe which led to bad 
feeling between the two of them.

Poe was educated at Stoke Newington in London from 1815-20.  Despite 
considerable academic success his gambling debts forced him to leave the 
University of Virginia, where he had gone to study, after one year. By 1827 
Poe, with typical restlessness, had moved from Boston to Richmond and then 
back to Boston again. He gained a good reputation in the army which he joined 
in 1827, but spent a miserable year at the US Military Academy at West Point 
in 1830, before being dishonourably discharged. 

Poe stayed in Baltimore from 1831-35 and began writing more seriously. In 1836 
he married his 13 year old cousin, Virginia. He had been working as a 
journalist since 1831, earning a bare minimum to survive, and from 1835-37 
edited the Southern Literary Messenger. 

His short stories reveal a fascination with emotional extremes, particularly 
fear, though his essays show that he was capable of being objective and 
critical.

 In 1844 Poe moved to New York, but despite popular acclaim his life was still 
wretched.  Virginia died of tuberculosis in 1847 and Poe, still poor and an 
alcoholic, died in Baltimore two years later.