A Brief Biography of Victorian Author Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe’s importance as a main stature in literature is based upon his dark and thought provoking poems. His difficult life influenced his melancholy writings. Edgar Allan Poe was born January 19, 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts. His parent’s occupation was traveling actors. At the age of two, his father abandoned the family leaving young Poe without a father figure. Poe’s mother was poor, which resulted in him having an extremely hard childhood. His mother passed away as he was growing up and his foster parent John Allan, a wealthy Richmond tobacco merchant, took Poe into his household. Poe did not have the best relationship with John Allan, in fact he felt very uncertain about it.

When Poe turned seventeen he attended the University of Virginia. The amount of money John Allan was giving Poe was not enough to cover the universities tuition requirements. One year later, Poe left the University of Virginia due to unfulfilled tuition payments. Some Poe experts say he may have gambled to obtain the debts. Other beliefs are that Poe later spent his two years in the army, in hopes to stay away from debtor’s prison. Poe did not feel welcomed in the army so he attended West Point Academy for two months. His choice in joining was not for himself, but to please John Allan.

Later on in Poe’s life his first short stories were founded in the Philadelphia Saturday Courier and an early short story “MS. Found in a Bottle” won a currency trophy for finest story in the Baltimore Saturday Visitor. However, Poe was still not getting enough money for him to live self-reliantly. The next year his economic problems were briefly relieved when he established an editorship at The Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond. The SLM (Southern Literar...

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...ecrecy.”

Be silent in that solitude,

Which is not loneliness—for then

The spirits of the dead who stood

In life before thee are again

In death around thee—and their will

Shall overshadow thee: be still.”

Poe had many famous poems but he was not getting the amount of money he deserved for his work. After Poe lost his mother and wife to the same disease his only resolution was drinking and writing in dark and gloomy detail. Edgar Allan Poe died in Baltimore of a mysterious death. He was found in torn clothing lying in the rain. He never gained consciousness, and was found in someone else’s clothing. Through his struggling childhood of losing his parents, not feeling completely loved by John Allan for not adopting him, and losing both his wife and mother Poe’s life influenced his gothic writing style which lead to his large fame in American literature today.