There is perhaps no figure in American literature more quoted, more widely read, and more misunderstood than Romantic-era writer Edgar Allen Poe. A brilliant and gifted writer, Poe contributed to the American library a great many short stories and poems which have grown very famous and have proven very influential over the years. Poe was a great many things to a great many people, and it is hard to nail down exactly just what it is any person really was, especially a complicated person like Poe, but here we shall attempt to lay out a basic biography of the man who so revolutionized American literature and is still known today as one of its most important writers.

The image of Edgar Allan Poe as it is understood today is often that of a dark and twisted sort of mad-genius, and although his stories did take new looks into the dark and the macabre, his persona and his manner might have been far more compatible with today's emo-kid image than that of a creepy Satan-worshiper as many would chose to paint him. Much of this stems from his life, which seems to have been a near constant struggle with death, disappointment, and abandonment from a very young age. Born in Boston in 1809, Poe faced hardship almost immediately as a young man, his father a terrible alcoholic and his mother very often taken ill. When Poe was still very young, his father abandoned their family, and his mother died from illness shortly after, and Poe was taken in by his aunt and uncle who lived further south in Richmond, Virginia.

Although they were kind enough to take him in, he was already in his mid-teens and approaching the age of adulthood and they never formally adopted him. Some drama occurred there in those very first years he was living in Virginia as his uncle inherited a large sum of money, and didn't see fit to give any to Poe. Poe, at the time, was engaged to a woman named Sarah Royster, but after one year at the University of Virginia, Poe's relationship with his fiance crumbled, as did whatever relationship Poe had with his uncle who didn't want to get mixed up in the gambling debts Poe had acquired in his one year of college and Poe was forced to drop out and return to Richmond. It was in Richmond where Poe began his writing career, writing short poems which would eventually form his first poetry collection which would be released anonymously when he was eighteen years old. He joined the Army under a fake name to support himself, released that anonymous collection, "Tamerlane and Other Poems," and Poe's military career took a shift after two years as he applied to go to West Point. In the meantime, he was putting out his first book under his own name during a short stint in Baltimore, and then abandoned the military all together after graduating from West Point (he faced trial for dereliction of duty but didn't seem to care). Poe moved to New York and released his third book of poetry, simply called "Poems."

It was after this, Poe's return to Baltimore, and the death of his brother, that he began seriously to try to be a writer, but at the time he was one of the first and only Americans to ever try to make a living only as a writer with no other side career. He began to write a lot, and his short stories were published and award-winning, earning Poe both notoriety and a new job at a magzine, from which he was promptly fired for being drunk all the time. Before he lost his job, however, he did use the Richmond Southern Literary Messenger to publish several of his own poems and short stories. Then, a tricky bit of history as Poe did indeed marry his thirteen year old cousin in 1835. He continued writing, publishing many famous short stories such as the Tell-Tale Heart, the Masque of the Red Death, the Cask of Amontillado," "The Fall of the House of Usher," and "The Pit and the Pendulum," and then his most famous poem, "The Raven" in 1845. Two years after the fame he gained from the publishing of that poem, his young wife died. Poe died shortly after of alcohol related causes in 1849.

Poe's influence is still felt throughout literature as he was one of the inventors of both the detective-mystery, which is a major genere today, as well as one of the first American short story writers. From a writer's perspective, Poe completely set a new standard for how writing could look, offering short stories as a means to a form of condensed writing that packed an intellectual and emotional punch. He was not the first short story writer, but he was one of the first and only writers to make a career from short stories. In addition, Poe's willingness to explore some of the more seedy elements of life in his art made him somewhat of a cult figure, although some of his stories seem a bit tame by today's standards. Others still remain quite graphic and hold up quite well, but Poe's stories are almost always studies in human nature and ideas of morality, famed as much for their interesting content as for their intelligent, emotional style. Edgar Allan Poe died before anyone could write a biography of him, but he probably would have been quite put off by the cheesy horror movie identity that is often placed on him today, because it was never his intention to be scary, but merely to be a writer and to explore the topics he wanted to explore.

Add Your Comments about Dana Barron: