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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: 4.11 · 1,930,713 ratings · 83,004 reviews · 10,323 distinct works • Similar authors

	The Complete Stories and Poems 4.40 avg rating — 299,136 ratings — published 1849 — 599 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 — 245,277 ratings — published 1843 — 8 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 — 173,838 ratings — published 1845 — 1194 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 — 128,928 ratings — published 1843 — 441 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 — 89,774 ratings — published 1846 — 367 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 3.84 avg rating — 91,864 ratings — published 1839 — 25 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 — 75,081 ratings — published 1960 — 176 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 — 70,508 ratings — published 1843 — 20 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 — 73,159 ratings — published 1842 — 358 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 — 59,133 ratings — published 1843 — 573 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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Polls

August 2017 Short Classic Poll

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

53 votes, 17.0%

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, 1952, 109 pgs

49 votes, 15.7%

The Lady with the Little Dog by Anton Chekhov, 1899, 80 pgs

34 votes, 10.9%

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard, 1966, 126 pgs

32 votes, 10.3%

Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving, 1819, 60 pgs

31 votes, 9.9%

Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville, 1853, 64 pgs

24 votes, 7.7%

The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, 1764, 125 pgs

24 votes, 7.7%

The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West, 1918, 82 pgs

19 votes, 6.1%

Satisfaction Guaranteed by Isaac Asimov, 1951, 15 pgs

15 votes, 4.8%

The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry, 1905, 30 pgs

12 votes, 3.8%

The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat, 1937, 108 pgs

10 votes, 3.2%

A Worn Path by Eudora Welty, 1941, 32 pg

9 votes, 2.9%

312 total votes

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Edgar Allan Poe’s Followers (29,160)

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