The Dark Writings of Edgar Allan Poe

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“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary…” The words we have all heard at least one. The Raven was Edgar Allan Poe’s most famous poem, among many other pieces. His writings depict a life of painful order, which reflect him and his experiences very well. In fact, he is most well known for writing morbid stories and gruesome poems. Poe’s disturbing childhood and ongoing life influenced his dark style and promoted his legacy.
Poe was born in Boston on January 19, 1809 to a pair of traveling actors, David Poe, Jr. and Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins - both of whom died before their son was three. He was the second of three children, separating from them during the fostering process. Poe was taken by a wealthy tobacco merchant by the name of John Allan and his wife, Frances Valentine Allan. Though he was never officially adopted, they treated him like their own. Frances and their new child seemed to form a strong bond, while John and Poe never quite meshed. Because his new father wanted him to abandon his love for writing, Poe attended an academy where he made many friends and outshined his peers, though this was not what made him happy. When he entered his teenage years, Poe learned of his foster fathers’ unfaithfulness to Frances and grew to resent him even more. Altercations between the two cultivated into what would be a decade of spite. In 1826, Poe left Richmond to attend the University of Virginia, accumulating significant debt. Allan had sent Poe to college with less than a third of the money he needed, though Allan had enough money to pay for it all, and then some. Being shunned by his father, Poe soon took up gambling to raise money to pay his dues. By the end of his first semester, Poe was so desperate that h...

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...rk and measured. These pieces often illustrate people on the brink of a gripping incident. They explore the darkness of human interactions, while offering short insight of what “could have been”. In addition to these dark works, Edgar Allan Poe also wrote satirical stories and poems. Some of his works also showed a high level of understanding both his audience and the perceptions of reality. Though critics and readers put his work on a pedestal, his fame, unfortunately, did not come until after his death. Poe would often spend months working on a poem, only to be paid a few dollars from the reviews or newspapers that would publish it.
The legacy of Edgar Allan Poe continues through his ongoing popularity as a writer. Though is life was mostly tragic events strung upon one another, he managed to make them into something that he loved and could share with the world.

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