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Edgar Allan Poe

Born

in Boston, Massachusetts, The United States

January 19, 1809

Died

October 07, 1849

Website

http://www.poemuseum.org

Genre

Horror, Poetry, Mystery

Influences

James Hogg, Thomas de Quincey, E.T.A. Hoffmann, John Milton, Charles ...more

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The name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead. His works have been in print since 1827 and include such literary classics as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, and The Fall of the House of Usher. This versatile writer’s oeuvre includes short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, and hundreds of essays and book reviews. He is widely acknowledged as the inventor of the modern detective story and an innovator in the science fiction genre, but he made his living as America’s 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.

Just as the bizarre c The name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead. His works have been in print since 1827 and include such literary classics as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, and The Fall of the House of Usher. This versatile writer’s oeuvre includes short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, and hundreds of essays and book reviews. He is widely acknowledged as the inventor of the modern detective story and an innovator in the science fiction genre, but he made his living as America’s 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.

Just as the bizarre characters in Poe’s stories have captured the public imagination so too has Poe himself. He is seen as a morbid, mysterious figure lurking in the shadows of moonlit cemeteries or crumbling castles. This is the Poe of legend. But much of what we know about Poe is wrong, the product of a biography written by one of his enemies in an attempt to defame the author’s name.

The real Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809. Edgar was the second of three children. His other brother William Henry Leonard Poe would also become a poet before his early death, and Poe’s sister Rosalie Poe would grow up to teach penmanship at a Richmond girls’ school. Within three years of Poe’s birth both of his parents had died, and he was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia while Poe’s siblings went to live with other families. Mr. Allan would rear Poe to be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe had dreams of being a writer in emulation of his childhood hero the British poet Lord Byron. Early poetic verses found written in a young Poe’s handwriting on the backs of Allan’s ledger sheets reveal how little interest Poe had in the tobacco business.

For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_al... ...more

Combine Editions
Edgar Allan Poe’s books

Average rating: 4.12 · 1,895,464 ratings · 79,963 reviews · 9,796 distinct works • Similar authors

	The Complete Stories and Poems 4.40 avg rating — 295,985 ratings — published 1849 — 600 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Writings 4.19 avg rating — 244,645 ratings — published 1843 — 91 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Raven 4.29 avg rating — 170,155 ratings — published 1845 — 1199 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe, Byron Glaser (Illustrator) 4.24 avg rating — 124,133 ratings — published 1843 — 434 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Cask of Amontillado 4.07 avg rating — 88,138 ratings — published 1846 — 364 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Fall of the House of Usher 3.85 avg rating — 88,714 ratings — published 1839 — 887 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales by Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen Marlowe (Editor) 4.17 avg rating — 74,884 ratings — published 1960 — 187 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Essential Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe, Benjamin Franklin Fisher (Editor) 4.36 avg rating — 70,290 ratings — published 1843 — 19 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Pit and the Pendulum 4.14 avg rating — 72,412 ratings — published 1842 — 60 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Black Cat 4.03 avg rating — 57,338 ratings — published 1843 — 86 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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The Halloween horror movie season is upon us, and the theaters are filled with options. But serious book people can tell you: For a really...

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Which book would you like to read in mid-September?

Our mid-September read will take us into October. Because of that the choices are dark/gothic-esque/horror.

We ask that you only vote if you are planning on participing in our discussion should your choice win.

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo

20 votes, 32.3%

Cousin Bette by Honoré de Balzac

19 votes, 30.6%

Uncle Silas by J. Sheridan Le Fanu

9 votes, 14.5%

The Works of Edgar Allan Poe. Volume 2 by Edgar Allan Poe

7 votes, 11.3%

The Monk by Matthew Lewis

7 votes, 11.3%

62 total votes

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Edgar Allan Poe’s Followers (28,678)

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