EP

Edgar Allan Poe

6 books in the library

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) was an American poet, short-story writer and critic. Born in Boston to two actors, he was orphaned before he was three and taken in by John Allan, a merchant in Richmond, Virginia, with whom he later fell out. After leaving the University of Virginia and being dismissed from West Point, he tried to live by writing, working as an editor and reviewer for magazines in Richmond, Philadelphia and New York. “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841) is often called the first modern detective story, and “The Raven” (1845) made him famous, though never prosperous. His wife, Virginia, died of tuberculosis in 1847. Poe died in Baltimore in October 1849, in circumstances that have never been explained. His tales of terror and his ideas about the short story reached far beyond America, not least through Charles Baudelaire’s French translations.