Brief Biographies
From the Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allen Poe:
Edgar Allen Poe was orphaned at an early age and adopted by John Allan
of Richmond, VA., whose name he added to his own. After a quarrel with
his stepfather he enlisted briefly in the Army and won an appoitment to
West Point. But he was temperamentally unfitted for military life, and
was dismissed for breaking the rules. His aunt, Mrs. Clemm of Baltimore,
took him in, and in 1836 he married his young cousin Virginia Clemm.
Meanwhile he launched his literary career with publication of verses in
Boston and New York. For a time he served as editor of the Southern
Literary Messenger, but heavy-drinkning, which by now had become
chronic with him, cost him the position. He successively edited two
other well-known literary periodicals, and won respect as a critic at the
same time that his poems and short stories were attracting wide notice
both in the U.S. and abroad. The death of his beloved wife in 1847 was a
blow from which he did not really recover. He died in Baltimore in 1849.
From the Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia:
Poe, Edgar Allan (1809-49), American writer, known as a poet and critic but most famous as the first master of the short-story form, especially tales of the mysterious and macabre.
Poe was born in Boston on January 19, 1809. His parents, touring actors, both died in Poe's early childhood, and the boy was raised by John Allan, a successful businessman of Richmond, Virginia. Taken by the Allan family to England at the age of six, he was placed in a private school. Upon returning to the U.S. in 1820 he continued to study in private schools and attended the University of Virginia for a year, but in 1827 his foster father, displeased by the young man's drinking and gambling, refused to pay his debts and forced him to work as a clerk.
Poe, disliking his new duties intensely, quit the job, thus estranging Allan, and went to Boston. There his first book, Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), was published anonymously. Shortly afterward Poe enlisted in the U.S. Army and served a 2-year term. In 1829 his second volume of verse, Al Aaraaf, was published, and he effected a reconciliation with Allan, who secured him an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy. After only a few months at the academy Poe was dismissed for neglect of duty, and his foster father disowned him permanently.
Poe's third book, Poems, appeared in 1831, and the following year he moved to Baltimore, where he lived with his aunt and her 11-year-old daughter, Virginia Clemm (1822-47). The following year his tale “A MS. Found in a Bottle” won a contest sponsored by the Baltimore Saturday Visitor. From 1835 to 1837 Poe was an editor of the Southern Literary Messenger. In 1836 he married his young cousin. Through the next decade, much of which was marred by his wife's long illness, Poe worked as an editor for various periodicals in Philadelphia and New York City. In 1847 Virginia died and Poe himself became ill; his disastrous addiction to liquor and his alleged use of drugs, recorded by contemporaries, contributed to his early death in Baltimore, on October 7, 1849.
Poetry and Essays
Among Poe's poetic output, some dozen or so poems are remarkable for their flawless literary construction and for their haunting themes and meters. In “The Raven” (1845), for example, the author is overwhelmed by melancholy and omens of death. Poe's extraordinary manipulation of rhythm and sound is particularly evident in “The Bells” (1849), a poem that seems to echo with the chiming of metallic instruments, and “The Sleeper” (1831), which reproduces the state of drowsiness. “Lenore” (1831) and “Annabel Lee” (1849) are verse lamentations on the death of a beautiful young woman.
In the course of his editorial work, Poe functioned largely as a book reviewer, producing also a significant body of criticism; his essays were famous for their sarcasm, wit, and exposure of literary pretension. His evaluations have withstood the test of time and earned for him a high place among American literary critics. Poe's theories on the nature of fiction and, in particular, his writings on the short story, have had a lasting influence on American and European writers.
Stories
Poe, by his own choice, was a poet, but economic necessity forced him to turn his pen more and more to the relatively profitable genre of prose. Whether or not Poe actually invented the short story, it is certain that he originated the novel of detection. Perhaps his best-known tale in this genre is “The Gold Bug” (1843), about a search for buried treasure. “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841), “The Mystery of Marie Rogęt” (1842-43), and “The Purloined Letter” (1844) are regarded as predecessors of the modern mystery, or detective, story.
Many of Poe's tales are distinguished by the author's unique grotesque inventiveness in addition to his superb plot construction. Such stories include “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839), in which the penetrating gloominess of the atmosphere is accented equally with plot and characterization; “The Pit and the Pendulum” (1842), a spine-tingling tale of cruelty and torture; “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843), in which a maniacal murderer is subconsciously haunted into confessing his guilt; and “The Cask of Amontillado” (1846), an eerie tale of revenge.
"Poe, Edgar Allan," Microsoft (R) Encarta. Copyright (c) 1993 Microsoft Corporation. Copyright (c) 1993 Funk & Wagnall's Corporation