Edgar Alan Poe Essay -- essays research papers

The Life Of Edgar Alan Poe a Biography 1809 -- 1849   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  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.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  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.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Edgar Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 19, 1809, the second of the three children of David Poe and Elizabeth (Arnold) Poe, both of whom were professional actors and members of a touring theatrical company. Eclipsed by his more famous wife, his own promising career ruined by alcoholism, Poe's father deserted the family when Edgar was still an infant; nothing conclusive is known of his life thereafter. While appearing professionally in Richmond, Virginia, Poe's mother became ill and died on   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  December 8, 1811, at the age of twenty-four. Her three children, who would maintain contact with one another throughout their lives, were sent to live with different foster families. Edgar became the ward of John Allan, a successful tobacco merchant in Richmond, and his wife Frances, who had no children of their own. Although never formally adopted by them, Poe regarded the couple, especially Mrs. Allan, as parents, and he took their surname as his own middle name. In 1815, business reasons led Allan to move to England for what would be a five-year stay. Both in London and then in Richmond after the family's return, Poe was well educated in private academies. In 1825, he became secretly engaged to... ...d, plunging Poe into an emotional and physical collapse that lasted for most of the year. In 1848, he was briefly engaged to marry Sarah Helen Whitman, a widowed poet several years his senior, but their relationship was tense and strained, and the engagement was broken off. He went to Richmond in the summer of 1849, hoping to find financial backing for yet another journal, and while there he was reunited with and re-engaged to Elmira Royster, his first love, now herself a widow. He sailed from Richmond to Baltimore, where on October 3, 1849, he was found outside a polling place (it was election day), in a state of delirium and wearing shabby and ill-fitting clothing. He was taken to a nearby hospital, where he raved feverishly for several days before dying on October 7 at the age of forty. Neither the circumstances that had led to his condition nor the exact cause of his death have ever been satisfactorily determined. Poe's posthumous reputation sustained grievous and long-lasting damage from a libelous biography by Rufus Griswold, whom Poe himself had appointed his literary executor, and rumors, mostly unfounded, circulate to this day about Poe's mental state and personal habits.