Edgar Allan Poe Influences

Edgar Allan Poe was born January 19th, 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts. He sadly never actually knew his parents. His father abandoned him and his mother; his mother then died when he was three years old. He soon found himself separated from his siblings and moving to Richmond, Virginia. There he was taken in by John and Frances Allan, a tobacco merchant and his wife. In 1826, Poe began studying at University of Virginia. His time there was cut short when John didn’t give Poe the money he needed, causing him to turn to gambling where he soon fell in debt. After falling in debt, Poe decided he was going to return home to his fiancé. Upon his return, he learned that she had moved on and got engaged to another man. With that being the final straw,

Quoting Poe, “We loved with a love that was more than love” seems to be the only thing that describes how he felt about young Virginia. They returned to Richmond and Poe began working for the Southern Literary Messenger magazine where he served as a critic. His reviews were so vicious he soon got a reputation as a “cut-throat” critic because he mainly focused on the effect that the style and structures of the writings had. A few years later he became a literary sensation when he published “The Raven” in 1845. Two years later in 1847, Virginia died after a terrible battle with tuberculosis. Following her death, he continued to work regardless of his disintegrating health and financial

He was taken to Washington College Hospital where he died October 7, 1849. There are several theories as to how he died such as alcoholism, rabies, epilepsy, and carbon monoxide poisoning to name a few. After his death Rufus Griswold ruined Poe's reputation by writing an obituary about him. He stated in the obituary that Poe was severely mentally ill, a drunk, and a womanizer or a man that seems to always have a new girlfriend and a man that isn’t afraid to start a new relationship with a woman before ending the previous one. Regardless of what Griswold says, Poe’s work has left a big mark on the world. As Edgar Allan Poe once said, “Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their