Edgar Allan Poe Influences

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Many of Edgar Allen Poe’s short stories and poems were influenced by his chaotic and depressing life experiences. This was his inspiration and showed easily throughout his literary accomplishments. One of Edgar’s first published collection of poems was in 1827 (The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica). Tamerland and other poems was a collection of poems with many literary themes. Edgars works were well known to contain great loss, heartbreaking sorrow, and thrilling suspense. Another collection of short stories Edgar had published was the Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque. As stated by Biography.com Editors, “It contained several of his most spine-tingling tales, including "The Fall of the House of Usher," "Ligeia" and "William Wilson." Edgar …show more content…

This poem resonated around the country and was remember as one of the most successful literary work Edgar has ever released. Sadly, during the writing of this poem, Edgar was going through a very depressing moment of his life. What might seem as a curse to some, the same disease that has taken many of this family and loved ones had taken hold of his wife. Edgar’s wife had contracted tuberculosis and became deathly ill (Joy Lanzendorfer). This was shown in his poem, for he, like the raven, will forever wish for their love ones to return. Even with the success of the poem’s publication, Edgar never found financial stability. During the 1800s, copyright laws were very poor, which in turn, hurt many writers of that time. Joy Lanzendorfer noted that without stricter copyright laws, Edgar didn’t see any monetary gains for the reprinting of his …show more content…

Edgar was known to use many of his life experiences, rumors, or local happens to inspire his writings. This is no different for this short story which came from the real-life murders of his time. A murder in 1830 in which the murderer, after being consumed with his guilt, reveals his heinous crime to authorities (Christopher Semtner). This was just one possible source for the inspiration of this short story. Edgar could have also loosely based the short story on another crime of that period. Since the accused fell in line with Edgars favorite writing style, this most likely could have been the case. The accused used the reason of insanity plea in the slaying of his daughter, which in turn, was deemed the case and lead the accused to an insane asylum (Christopher

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