How Did Edgar Allan Poe Wrote The Raven

“The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.” -Edgar Allan Poe regarding how he wrote “The Raven” in his short essay “The Philosophy of Composition”(Cain 770). Edgar Allan Poe is an infamous American author who penned more than fifty short stories and poems during his short life span in the nineteenth century, Notorious for his gothic style, Poe has become a beloved author by millions. Some may believe that his dark and gruesome writings may just be his imagination, but his writings may have a scary truth to them. With a life full of depression, addiction, and death; it is no wonder that Poe wrote such somber stories.
Born on January 19, 1809, in Boston, Massachusetts, his parents were both traveling

One of these stories, “The Masque of the Red Death”, tells a tale about a country that has been infected with a deadly plague. The ruler of the country, Prince Prospero takes shelter in his castle with his favorite knights and ladies, having a never ending party, while the people of his kingdom perish. After six months of being locked inside the castle, Prospero decides to hold a magnificent masquerade ball. He holds the ball in seven room, each with their own color, including blue, purple, green, orange, white, violet, and black. The windows in each of these rooms match the color scheme as well; except for the black room, which has deep, almost blood-like red windows. To make the ebony room even more sinister, it contains a massive black clock that chimes every hour that makes everyone at the party stop dancing and fall silent, When the clock begins to strike at midnight, all the guests at the party stop dancing and notice another person at the party that they have not seen before. This unknown guest is dressed in a horrific costume of someone who has died from the ‘red death’. Prospero demands the man be detained and undressed because of his disgraceful costume, but no one moves to do so. The strange man heads towards the black room, where Prospero follows him with intentions of killing him; when suddenly the figure turns around and Prospero falls to the ground dead. The angered guests go to attack the man, who

The ‘red death’ was not an actual disease that occurred anywhere in the world, Poe managed to make it up completely. The red death imitates the Black Plague, which according to Tracy M. Caldwell “a disease so named because the skin of its victims would turn black from hemorrhaging under the surface, a pandemic of the 14th century”(12). The red death Poe describes in his story though also includes symptoms of Tuberculosis, which took the lives of many people Edgar loved. Poe writes, “Blood was its Avatar and its seal -- the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution”(Poe 1). Typical symptoms of Tuberculosis include chest pains and coughing up blood, which correlates to the symptoms of the red death. Poe’s young wife Virginia contracted Tuberculosis in 1842, three years before he published this story. Having to take care of her while she was slowly dying, Poe became a little too familiar with the symptoms and could have very well used them in the story. Poe named the main character of his story Prince Prospero, which can be seen as a short synonym for ‘prosperity’. struggled with poverty his whole life, Poe could have named him that to personify all the prosperous people that he envied in his life and how he wished death upon