Edgar Allan Poe is celebrated as the father of the detective story, a major horror writer and poet. But he was also a man torn by tragic circumstances. His life was as bleak and dramatic as some of his works.

Tragic life story

Born in Boston in 1809, Edgar Poe had become 
an orphan by the time he was three years old. 
He was taken in by the wealthy Allan family and 
even took the surname of his foster parents as his 
own middle name. In 1827 he showed his literary 
talents when he published his fi rst book of poems 
Tamerlane and Other Poems at his own expense. 
Afterwards he continued publishing poems and 
short stories and soon became an editor of literary 
magazines in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and then in 
New York. In fact, Poe was one of the fi rst American 
writers to try making a career out of writing alone. 
Sometimes he had trouble fi nding and keeping 
a job and coped with stress by drinking. In 1836 
he married his 13-year-old cousin Virginia Clemm, 
who became his life-long inspiration. The character 
of a beautiful cousin reappears in his poetry and 
short stories. Her sudden death from tuberculosis 
at the age of 24 reinforced Poe’s drinking habit.

In October 1849 he was found unconscious on the 
street in Baltimore and died in hospital a few days 
later. Biographers speculate whether it was a result 
of his alcoholism, a murder or a suicide, but we’ll 
never know.

Tales of horror, adventure and love
Throughout the 1830s and early 1840s a great 
variety of Poe’s stories were published in magazines 
and later included in the collections Tales of the 
Grotesque and Arabesque (1840) and The Black Cat 
and Other Stories (1843). Besides Poe’s signature10
horror stories such as “The Fall of the House of 
Usher” he also produced adventure stories such 
as “Manuscript Found in a Bottle”, or a love story 
“Eleanora” and the fi rst known detective story 
“The Murders in the Rue Morgue” with the French 
detective C. Auguste Dupin. 
Poe’s horror stories contain a lot of supernatural 
elements and the line between reality and the 
fantastic is very thin. One of the most famous, “The 
Black Cat” (1845), is told from the point of view of 
a man who gradually loses his sanity and commits 
a terrible crime. Poe was very much preoccupied
with the state of the human mind in his works.
As for Poe’s poetry, his most famous poem “The 
Raven” is a classic in American literature. It deals 
with the loss of a loved woman and death. Formally, 
it stands out because of its rhyme.

Jacy Meyer (USA), Bridge October 2010