Edgar Allen Poe by, dave march 15 1999, Edgar Allen Poe, an America writer, was known as a poet and critic but was most famous as the master of short stories, particularly tales of the mysterious and the macrabe. The literary merits of Poe’s writings have been debated since his death, but his works have continued to be popular and many American and European writers have declared their artistic debt to him. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Poe was orphaned in his early childhood and was raised by John Allen, a successful business man of Richmond, Virginia. Taken by the Allen family to England at the age of six, Poe was placed in a private school. Upon returning to the United States in 1820, he continued to study in private schools. He attended the University of Virginia for a year, but in 1827 his foster father, angry by the young man’s drinking and gambling, refused to pay his debts and forced him to work as a clerk. Poe, disliking his new duties violently, he quit the job as a clerk, thus estranging Allen, and went to Boston. There his first book, Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), was published anonymously. Shortly afterward Poe enlisted in the United States Army and served a two-year term. In 1829 his second volume of verse, Al Aaraaf, was published, and he completed a agreement with Allen, who secured him an appointment to the United States Military Academy. After only a few months at the Military Academy Poe was dismissed for neglect of duty, and his foster father disowned him permanently. Poe’s third book, Poems, appeared in 1831, and the following year he moved to Baltimore, where he lived with his aunt and her eleven-year-old daughter, Virginia Clemm. The following year his tale “A MS. Found in a Bottle” won a contest sponsored by the Baltimore Saturday Visitor. From 1835 to 1836, Poe was editor of the Southern Literary Messenger. In 1836 he married his young cousin. Throughout the next decade, much ...
