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Edgar Allan Poe's Mental Health

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Edgar Allan Poe is very well known for his short stories having to do with a dark and eerie tone but was the stories actually “stories” or more to do with psychology and how his brain could of had issues that affected his writing. Throughout Poe’s short stories does the recurring mental health issues his characters face have to do with the gothic and romanticism movement or more with his own issues. As well as how his rough life and the common loss in it could have had major effects how he wrote the way he did and why certain stories were created. With a recurring tone of mental health issues throughout Poe’s short stories, could that be the cause of something deeper rooted rather than just the romanticism movement that surrounded his writing. …show more content…

Throughout his life he had many family problems such as: being abandoned by his father as a result of problems related to alcoholism, the deaths of both his mother and foster mother due to tuberculosis and not getting along with his foster dad. “He also had financial difficulties and endless problems when working as a journalist and writer because of frequent bouts of depression, mood swings and abuse of substances such as alcohol, opium, laudanum and morphine” (Teive). He became an orphan as a child and was adopted by John Allan and Frances Kelling from Richmond, in Virginia. He started his studies at University of Virginia in Charlottesville in February 1826. At age 18, Poe moved to Boston and quickly arranged the publication of his first book, a collection of poems under the title Tamerlane. Teive also states in his article that, “Despite his authorship, Poe didn't put his name anywhere in it and instead simply gave author's credit to “A Bostonian,” perhaps hoping that the book would get more attention since Boston was then a literary mecca”. After this not working as he had hoped he had enlisted in the army and left two years after to return home which did not work out as planned. He became involved with different women and eventually married his 13 year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm, who also died from tuberculosis eleven years after their union. Poe died later on October 7, 1849, at the age of forty and his death is still

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