The son of itinerant actors, orphaned in early childhood, Edgar Allan Poe had a difficult start to what proved a short and troubled life – bedevilled by lack of money, mental instability and alcoholism, yet remarkable for its rich legacy of poetry, short stories, criticism and detective fiction.
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Poe was fostered as a child by John Allan and his family and in 1815 travelled with them to England, where he went to school in Stoke Newington, London. The Allans returned to America in 1820 and after finishing school there, Poe went to the University of Virginia but left after a year, having run up unmanageable gambling debts. He then enlisted in the Army, only to be dishonourably discharged, after which he began working as a journalist in Baltimore, lodging with a relative there until 1835. A year later he married the daughter of the house, his 13-year-old cousin Virginia.
Despite the debts and military failure, Poe’s literary career had begun; in 1827 his first book, Tamerlane and Other Poems, appeared, followed by Al Aaraaf in 1829, and while working as an editor he published his short stories in magazines.
In 1840 the first collection, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, introduced his unnerving blending of gothic romance and psychological horror, but it was The Raven, originally published in a New York newspaper in 1845 and followed by The Raven and Other Poems that brought Poe fame, but little wealth.
After the success of The Raven, Poe wrote two critical works explaining his literary aesthetic, The Philosophy of Composition and The Poetic Principle: both now overshadowed by the enduring popularity of stories such as The Fall of the House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum and The Murders in the Rue Morgue.
In 1847 Poe’s wife died; he continued to work, but his struggles with nervous disorders and alcoholism intensified. His death in Baltimore in 1849 remains a mystery: he was found in a delirious state, wearing clothes that weren’t his own, and died a few days later.
