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Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) Written and Contributed by SUGABUGA456 Edgar
Allan Poe was one of America’s famous poets, fiction short-story writers, and
literary critics. He is known as the first master of short story form especially
in tales of horror, and mystery. The work he produced was considered to be some
of the most influential literary criticism of his time. His poems made him one
of the most famous figures in American literary history. His influence on
literature is seen in all literature books in schools everywhere. Some of his
famous writings is that of “Annabel Lee”; his detective story, “The Murders in
Rue Morgue”; “The Pit and the Pendulum” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” are the best
among his horror stories; and The Raven one of his best poems which among all
these, made him very famous in 1845. “The Fall of the House of Usher”, and “The
Masque of the Red Death”, made him a forerunner of symbolism, and impressionism.
Poe antagonized many people with a scathing campaign against an American poet
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow for supposed plagiarism. Later that year Poe admitted
to being drunk, which further separated him from the public.
Poe’s later years
were full of economic hardship and ill health. Poe was born in Boston,
Massachusetts on January 19, 1809. He was orphaned at the early age of two, his
father deserted the family and his mother died all before he was three in 1811,
then Poe became a ward and was raised as a foster child by John Allan, a wealthy
merchant of tobacco, and his wife Frances in Richmond, VA but they never legally
adopted him. Taken by the Allan family to England at the age of six, Poe was
placed in a private school. In 1826 Poe enrolled at the University of Virginia
in Charlottesville. where he acquired gambling debts that John Allan refused to
pay. Eventually, Poe was forced to withdraw from the university, and Allan
prevented his return to the university and broke off Poe’s engagement to Sarah
Elmira Royster, his Richmond sweetheart. His relationship with Allan was
declined and he moved from his foster father and enlisted in the army. Also in
1827, he went to Boston where he wrote his fist book “Tamerlane and other poems”
that he sold for $.12 a copy but it didn’t sell. He served a two year term while
waiting for an appointment to the US Military Academy. While temporarily
reconciled, Allan secured him an appointment to the academy. In 1830 Poe entered
the US Military Academy at West Point, NY, where he excelled in languages but
was expelled in 1831 and now his foster father disowned him permanently. Later
on sometime after 1831 he moved to Baltimore where he lived with his aunt, Maria
Clemm, and her daughter- his cousin, Virginia Clemm. March 27, 1834 John Allan
dies leaving Poe with nothing. In May of 1836 he married Virginia, his 13-year
old cousin. For 10 years Poe worked as an editor for various periodicals and
contributor to magazines in several cites on the pay of $10 a week, so he was
unable to support his family, his aunt, Virginia, and himself. Lots of time they
went without eating. But it was in one of those that his story “The Fall of the
House of Usher” first appeared in 1839. He unsuccessfully tried to found and
edit his own magazine which would have granted him financial security and
artistic control in what he considered a hostile literary marketplace.
The last
years of Poe’s life was a tragic period. In January of 1842 Virginia broke a
blood vessel while singing, and died of tuberculosis on January 30, 1847 after
five years of illness. Then Poe himself became ill, he had a deadly addiction to
liquor and his alleged use of drugs which probably contributed to his early
death. In the summer of 1849 he revisited Richmond, lectured , and was accepted
anew by the fiancée he had lost in 1826. After his return north he was found
unconscious on a Baltimore street. Poe was only 40 when he died in 1849.
Newspapers gave the cause of death as “congestion of the brain” and “cerebral
inflammation”, which my sources said was terms that suggest doctors didn’t have
a definitive explanation but they thought it was a severe neurological disorder.
Another doctor from the University of Maryland Medical Center reviewed his case
and was assigned to make and explain a diagnosis based on available facts and he
came to the conclusion that it was a rabies infection.
The case was known to be
a antique because of the lack of lab data. Back then they didn’t have CT scans,
or MRI’s. Before his death he was seen passing through Baltimore in later
September 1849 and vanished. He turned up on Oct. 3 muttering incoherently and
dressed in filthy, strange, and unusual clothing. He was taken to Church
Hospital then known as Washington Medical College on Broadway where he spend
four days where his doctor put very simply: “talking with spectral and imaginary
objects on the walls”. So in other words he was crazy, delirious and other times
he was either in a coma. Despite the widely held belief that Poe was in a
drunken stupor, he showed no signs of alcohol when he was admitted to the
hospital. According to medical records he had abstained from drinking after and
few months earlier attending a temperance league in Richmond. One theory says
his condition seemed to improve for a time, but by the evening of his third day
he became combative calling out the names of family, friends and somebody named
Reynolds and had to be restrained. Another theory says that he was found
unconscious and remained unconscious. Bout both theories state that he died on
the fourth day, October 7th at 5 am. His last words were said to be “Lord, help
my poor soul”. He was buried near his grandfather in the Presbyterian cemetery.
It was obvious that Poe was in a depressing situation most of his life. His life
was exaggerated and exposed in a embarrassing manner. He was hurt by his enemies
and I think he was ashamed of himself or wanted more of his life. Poe was
hounded by economic troubles, haunted by nightmares and visions, he had many
fears, and a ot of imagination which he expressed in his stories. It has been
150 years since Poe’s death but since his death, but he has had more books
published than any other American author. I think he will always be remembered.
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