Poe, Edgar Allan

Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809–49, American poet, short-story writer, and critic, b. Boston. He is acknowledged today as one of the most brilliant and original writers in American literature. His skillfully wrought tales and poems convey with passionate intensity the mysterious, dreamlike, and often macabre forces that pervaded his sensibility. He is also considered the father of the modern detective story.

Early Life and Works

After the death of his parents, both of whom were actors, by the time he was three years old, Poe was taken into the home of his godfather, John Allan, a wealthy Richmond merchant. The Allans took him to Europe, where he began his education in schools in England and Scotland. Returning to the United States in 1820, he continued his schooling in Richmond and in 1826 entered the Univ. of Virginia. He showed remarkable scholastic ability in classical and romance languages but was forced to leave the university after only eight months because of quarrels with Allan over his gambling debts. Poverty soon forced him to enlist in the army.

Because of the deathbed plea of his foster mother, he achieved an unenthusiastic reconciliation with Allan, which resulted in an honorable discharge from the army and an appointment to West Point in 1830. However, when Allan remarried the following year Poe lost all hope of further assistance from him and was expelled from the Academy for infraction of numerous minor rules. His first book, Tamerlane and Other Poems, was published in 1827. It was followed by two more volumes of verse in 1829 and 1831. None of these early collections attracted critical or popular recognition. Poe went to Baltimore to live with his aunt, Mrs. Maria Clemm, and her daughter Virginia. In 1835, J. P. Kennedy helped him become an editor of the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond. He contributed stories, poems, and astute literary criticism, but his drinking lost him the editorship.

Later Life and Mature Works

In 1836 Poe married Virginia Clemm, then only 13, and in 1837 they went to New York City, where he published The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838). From 1838 to 1844, Poe lived in Philadelphia, where he edited Burton's Gentleman's Magazine (1839–40) and Graham's Magazine (1841–42). His criticism, which appeared in these magazines and in the Messenger, was direct and incisive and made him a respected and feared critic. Some of his magazine stories were collected as Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840). At that time he also began writing mystery stories. In 1844, Poe moved back to New York, where he worked on the Evening Mirror and later edited and owned the Broadway Journal.

The Raven and Other Poems (1845) won him fame as a poet both at home and abroad. In 1846 he moved to the Fordham cottage (now a museum) and there wrote "The Literati of New York City" for Godey's Lady's Book. His wife died in 1847, and by the following year Poe was courting the poet Sarah Helen Whitman. However, in 1849 he returned to Richmond and became engaged to Elmira Royster, a childhood sweetheart who was by then the widowed Mrs. Shelton. On his way north to bring Mrs. Clemm to the wedding, he became involved in a drinking debauch in Baltimore. This indulgence proved fatal, for he died a few days later.

Assessment

Poe's literary executor, R. W. Griswold, overemphasized Poe's personal faults and distorted his letters. Poe was a complex person, tormented and alcoholic yet also considerate and humorous, a good friend, and an affectionate husband. Indeed, his painful life, his neurotic attraction to intense beauty, violent horror, and death, and his sense of the world of dreams contributed to his greatness as a writer. Such compelling stories as "The Masque of the Red Death" and "The Fall of the House of Usher" involve the reader in a universe that is at once beautiful and grotesque, real and fantastic.

His poems (including "To Helen," "The Raven," "The City in the Sea," "The Bells," and "Annabel Lee") are rich with musical phrases and sensuous, at times frightening, images. Poe was also an intelligent and witty critic who often theorized about the art of writing. The analytical mind he brought to criticism is evident also in his famous stories of ratiocination, notably "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Purloined Letter." Poe influenced such diverse authors as Swinburne, Tennyson, Dostoyevsky, Conan Doyle, and the French symbolists.

Bibliography

See his collected poems and stories (3 vol., 1969–78); his letters, ed. by J. W. Ostrom (2 vol., 1948, repr. 1966); biographies by J. Symons (1981), D. Thomas and D. K. Jackson (1987), K. Silverman (1991), and J. Meyers (1992); studies by D. Hoffman (1972), B. L. Knapp (1984), J. G. Kennedy (1989), and D. Stashower (2006).

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Poe, Edgar Allan

(born Jan. 19, 1809, Boston, Mass., U.S.—died Oct. 7, 1849, Baltimore, Md.) U.S. poet, critic, and short-story writer. Poe was raised by foster parents in Richmond, Va., following his mother's death in 1811. He briefly attended the University of Virginia and then returned to Boston, where in 1827 he published a pamphlet of youthful, Byronic poems. By 1835 he was in Richmond as editor of the Southern Literary Messenger, the first of several periodicals he was to edit or write for. There he married a 13-year-old cousin, who died in 1847. At various times he lived in Baltimore, New York, and Philadelphia. Alcohol, the bane of his irregular and eccentric life, caused his death at age 40. His works are famous for his cultivation of mystery and the macabre. Among his tales are “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” “The Black Cat,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” and “The Pit and the Pendulum.” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Purloined Letter” initiated the modern detective story. His poems (less highly regarded now than formerly) are musical and sensuous, as in “The Bells,” a showcase of sound effects; they include touching lyrics inspired by women (e.g., “Annabel Lee”) and the uncanny (e.g., “The Raven”).

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Poe, Edgar Allan (1809–49) poet, writer; born in Boston, Mass. He was abandoned by his father when a baby and his mother died before he was three, so he was taken as a foster child into the home of John Allan, a Richmond (Va.) tobacco merchant whose business took him to Great Britain, where Poe was educated (1815–20). Returning to Virginia, he continued his education (1823–25) and attended the University of Virginia (1826); having quarrelled with his foster father (although he chose "Allan" as his middle name) over his gambling debts and refusal to study law, he then went to Boston, where, anonymously and at his own expense, he published Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827). He served in the U.S. Army under a false name (Edgar A. Perry) and incorrect age (1827–29) and then attended West Point (1830–31), but got himself dismissed when he realized he would never be reconciled with his foster father. He then went to Baltimore to live with his aunt, Mrs. Maria Clemm; he would marry her daughter and his own cousin, 13-year-old Virginia Clemm, in 1836. His third volume of poetry (1831) brought neither fame nor profit, but a prize-winning short story, "A MS Found in a Bottle" (1833), gained him the editorship of the Southern Literary Messenger (1835–36). During the next several years he was a journalist and editor for a variety of periodicals in New York City, Philadelphia, and then back in New York City, where he settled in 1844 and continued working as an editor while nursing schemes of starting his own magazine. All this while he was gaining some reputation for his short stories, poems, reviews, and essays; such stories as "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839), "Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841), and "The Goldbug" (1843), would later be regarded as classics of their genre. He gained some fame from the publication in 1845 of a dozen stories as well as of The Raven and Other Poems, and he enjoyed a few months of calm as a respected critic and writer. After his wife died in 1847, however, his life began to unravel even faster as he moved about from city to city, lecturing and writing, drinking heavily, and courting several older women. Just before marrying one, he died in Baltimore after being found semiconscious in a tavern—possibly from too much alcohol, although it is a myth that he was a habitual drunkard and drug addict. Admittedly a failure in most areas of his personal life, he was recognized as an unusually gifted writer and was admired by Dostoevsky and Baudelaire, even if not always appreciated by many of his other contemporaries. Master of symbolism and the macabre, he is considered to be the father of the detective story and a stepfather of science fiction, and he remains one of the most timeless and extraordinary of all American creative artists.