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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: 4.13 · 1,759,894 ratings · 68,496 reviews · 9,730 distinct works • Similar authors

	The Complete Stories and Poems 4.40 avg rating — 281,394 ratings — published 1849 — 195 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 — 241,785 ratings — published 1843 — 28 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 — 154,307 ratings — published 1845 — 954 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 — 106,967 ratings — published 1843 — 390 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 4.08 avg rating — 82,340 ratings — published 1846 — 318 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 — 74,210 ratings — published 1960 — 150 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 — 69,555 ratings — published 1843 — 17 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 3.87 avg rating — 76,943 ratings — published 1839 — 828 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 4.15 avg rating — 69,750 ratings — published 1842 — 331 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 — 50,282 ratings — published 1843 — 515 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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Series by Edgar Allan Poe

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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...

Polls

July 2017 Short Story Poll

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway, 132 pages, 1952

83 votes, 25.4%

The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe, 56 pages, 1842

61 votes, 18.7%

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, 109 pages 1952

43 votes, 13.1%

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, 110 pages, 1984

36 votes, 11.0%

Summer by Edith Wharton, 127 pages, 1917

31 votes, 9.5%

Chess Story by Stefan Zweig, 104 pages, 1941

26 votes, 8.0%

To Build a Fire by Jack London, 32 pages, 1903

15 votes, 4.6%

The Rocking Horse Winner by D.H. Lawrence, 22 pages, 1926

13 votes, 4.0%

A Worn Path by Eudora Welty, 32 pages, 1941

13 votes, 4.0%

The Playboy of the Western World by J.M. Synge, 68 pages, 1907

6 votes, 1.8%

327 total votes

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Edgar Allan Poe’s Followers (26,863)

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