Edgar Allen Poe
Brooklyn Oneal
Edgar Allen Poe
Who was Edgar Allen Poe? Well he was a famous poet. His works has been in print since 1827. He's widely acknowledged as the inventor of the modern detective story and an innovator in the science fiction genre, but he made his living as Americas first great literary critic and theoretician. Poe's reputation today rests primarily on his tales of terror as well as on his haunting, lyric poetry. In 1826 Poe left Richmond to attend the University of Virginia, where he excelled in his classes while accumulating considerable debt. The miserly Allen had sent Poe to college with less than a third of the money he needed, and Poe soon took up gambling to raise money to pay his expenses. By the end of his first term, Poe was so desperately poor that he burned his furniture to keep warm. Humiliated by his poverty, and furious with Allen for not providing enough funds in the first place, Poe returned to Richmond and visited the home of his fiancee Elmira Royster, only to discover she had engaged to another man in his absence. Edgar Allen Poe was born in Boston on January 19, 1809. His parents were David and Elizabeth Poe. David was born in Baltimore on July 18, 1784. Elizabeth Arnold came to the U.S. from England in 1796 and married David Poe after her first husband died in 1805. They had three children, Henry, Edgar, and Rosalie. Elizabeth died in 1811 when Edgar was 2 years old. She had separated from her husband and had taken her three kids with her. Edgar Allen Poe's mother and father were professional actors, died before the poet was three years old, and John and Frances Allen raised him as a foster child in Richmond, Virginia. In 1821, Poe attends the school of joseph H. Clark. In 1823, Poe attends the school of William Burke. In 1806 ( March 14 ) Traveling stage actors David Poe, Jr. and Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins marry. In 1807 ( Jan. 30 ) William Henry Leonard Poe is born to David and Elizabeth Poe in Boston. Edgar Allan Poe began to sell short stories to magazines at around this time, and in 1835, he became the editor of the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond, where he moved with his aunt and cousin in Virginia. Most of his life was filled with disease. His wife died of Tuberculosis and so did his mother. His mother, as I said, died when Edgar was three.