The life and stories of Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe is celebrated as the father of the detective story, a major horror writer and poet. But he was also a man torn by tragic circumstances. His life was as bleak and dramatic as some of his works.

Tragic life story

Born in Boston in 1809, Edgar Poe had become an orphan, by the time he was three years old. He was taken in by the wealthy Allan family and even took the surname of his foster parents as his own middle name. In 1827 he showed his literary talents when he published his first book of poems TamerLane and Other Poems at his own expense. Afterwards he continued publishing poems and short stories and soon became an editor of literary magazines in Baltimore, Philadephia, and then in New York. In fact, Poe was one of the first American writers to try making a career out of writing alone. Sometimes he had trouble finding and keeping a job and coped with stress by drinking. In 1836 he married his 13-year old cousin Virginia Clemm, who became his life-long ispiration. The character of a beatiful cousin reappears in his poetry and short stories. Her sudden death from tuberculosis at the age of 24 reinforced Poe´s drinking habit.

In October 1849 he was found unconscious on the street in Baltimore and died in hospital a few days later. Biographers speculate whether it was a result of his alcoholism, a murder or a suicide, but we´ll never know.

Tales of horror, adventure and love

Throughout the 1830s and early 1840s a great variety of Poe´s stories were published in magazines and later included in the collections Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque and The Black Cat and Other stories. Besides signature horror stories such as “The Fall of the Housse of Usher” Poe also produced adventure stories such as “Manuscript Found in a Bottle”, or a love story “Eleanora” and the first known detective story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” with the French detective C. Auguste Dupin.

Poe´s horror stories contain a lot of supernatural elements and the line between reality and the fantastic is very thin. One of the most famous, “The Black Cat”, is told from the point of view of a man who gradually loses his sanity and commits a terrible crime. Poe was very much preoccupied with the state of the human mind in his works. As for Poe´s poetry, his most famous poem “The Raven” is a classic in American literature. It deals with the loss of a loved woman and death. Formally, it stands out because of its rhyme.