The Dark Side Of Edgar Allan Poe Essay

The Dark Side of Poe

During the 1800’s Edgar Allan Poe was one of the first writers to write about Detective fiction and Gothic horror. He is well known today as “one of the most brilliant and original American writers” (Edgar Allan Poe) Poe was born 1809, Boston, Massachusetts to two professional actors, Elizabeth Amold Poe and David Poe, Jr. His Parents died when he was around three and was shortly after adopted by John Allan. From whom he got his middle name from. “From 1815 to 1820 the family lived in England, where Poe acquired much of his early education as well as his first exposure to the Gothic style that figures so prominently in the atmosphere and settings of his works.”(Møllegaard) As a child Poe attended Joseph H. Clark and then the school of William Burke in 1821- 1823. He later than went to the University of Virginia. He only spent a year at the

He got a lot of his writing ideas from the things that has happened in his life. His story “The Black Cat” related to him because just as the unknown narrator he too had a drinking problem. When his wife Virginia died in 1847 it took a tole on his writing and also his health. But through the struggle Poe became well enough to publish his famous Eureka: A Prose Poem. Poe never fully recovered but he did get engaged to his childhood sweetheart, Sarah Elmira Royster. In the last year of Poe’s life he started to received a regular income from lecturing and writing. He even gained some popularity in Richmond society. “On September 24, 1894 Poe would deliver his final lecture, "The Poetic Principle," in Richmond. On September 27, he took a steamer to Baltimore en route to New York. On October 3, he was found senseless and apparently drunk in a polling place and taken to a hospital, where he died a few days later, on October 7, at the age of forty.”(Minor) People are not sure the cause of Poe’s death or where he is