Edgar Allan Poe

Author profile

born

in Boston, Massachusetts, The United States

January 19, 1809

died

October 07, 1849

gender

male

website

http://www.poemuseum.org

genre

Horror, Poetry, Mystery & Thrillers

About this author

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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 biz...more 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.

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Average rating: 4.17 · 425,924 ratings · 7,595 reviews · 1,470 distinct works · Similar authors

	The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Writings 4.12 of 5 stars 4.12 avg rating — 102,532 ratings — published 1843 — 21 editions	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
	Complete Stories and Poems 4.36 of 5 stars 4.36 avg rating — 103,365 ratings — published 2006 — 179 editions	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) 4.11 of 5 stars 4.11 avg rating — 31,927 ratings — published 1839 — 82 editions	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
	Essential Tales and Poems by Edgar Allan Poe, Benjamin F. Fisher (Editor) 4.31 of 5 stars 4.31 avg rating — 27,831 ratings — published 1989 — 4 editions	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 4.05 of 5 stars 4.05 avg rating — 20,734 ratings — published 1846 — 25 editions	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 and Other Poems 4.26 of 5 stars 4.26 avg rating — 19,078 ratings — published 1845 — 32 editions	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 4.08 of 5 stars 4.08 avg rating — 18,223 ratings — published 1842 — 43 editions	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 by Edgar Allan Poe, Gustave Doré (Illustrator) 4.23 of 5 stars 4.23 avg rating — 11,157 ratings — published 1844 — 77 editions	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 Masque of the Red Death 4.07 of 5 stars 4.07 avg rating — 8,479 ratings — published 1842 — 35 editions	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 3.86 of 5 stars 3.86 avg rating — 8,034 ratings — published 2000 — 70 editions	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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Quotes by Edgar Allan Poe

“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

tags: insanity, sanity

6,796 people liked it

“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

tags: dreaming, dreams, perception

5,803 people liked it

“Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Eleonora

tags: day, dreaming, dreams, night

5,210 people liked it

See all Edgar Allan Poe's quotes »

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Who is your favorite author? [You HAVE to have at least 2 answers available. I was checking to see if you could just do write-in only. Plus, wanted to see what it looked like...]

Vonnegut, Kurt

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Edgar Allan Poe

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2 total votes

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