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Edgar Allan Poe

in Boston, Massachusetts, The United States

James Hogg, Thomas de Quincey, E.T.A. Hoffmann, John Milton, Charles James Hogg, Thomas de Quincey, E.T.A. Hoffmann, John Milton, Charles Dickens, Coleridge, Percy Shelley, John Keats, Elizabeth Barrett Browning ...more

The name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead. His works have been in print since 1827 and include such literary classics as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, and The Fall of the House of Usher. This versatile writer’s oeuvre includes short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, and hundreds of essays and book reviews. He is widely acknowledged as the inventor of the modern detective story and an innovator in the science fiction genre, but he made his living as America’s first great literary critic and theoretician. Poe’s reputation today rests primarily on his tales of terror as well as on his haunting lyric poetry.

Just as the bizarre c

The name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead. His works have been in print since 1827 and include such literary classics as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, and The Fall of the House of Usher. This versatile writer’s oeuvre includes short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, and hundreds of essays and book reviews. He is widely acknowledged as the inventor of the modern detective story and an innovator in the science fiction genre, but he made his living as America’s first great literary critic and theoretician. Poe’s reputation today rests primarily on his tales of terror as well as on his haunting lyric poetry.

Just as the bizarre characters in Poe’s stories have captured the public imagination so too has Poe himself. He is seen as a morbid, mysterious figure lurking in the shadows of moonlit cemeteries or crumbling castles. This is the Poe of legend. But much of what we know about Poe is wrong, the product of a biography written by one of his enemies in an attempt to defame the author’s name.

The real Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809. Edgar was the second of three children. His other brother William Henry Leonard Poe would also become a poet before his early death, and Poe’s sister Rosalie Poe would grow up to teach penmanship at a Richmond girls’ school. Within three years of Poe’s birth both of his parents had died, and he was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia while Poe’s siblings went to live with other families. Mr. Allan would rear Poe to be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe had dreams of being a writer in emulation of his childhood hero the British poet Lord Byron. Early poetic verses found written in a young Poe’s handwriting on the backs of Allan’s ledger sheets reveal how little interest Poe had in the tobacco business.

For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_al...

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The Complete Stories and Poems The Complete Stories and Poems 4.40 avg rating — 281,554 ratings — published 1849 —305 editions Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars
The Tell-Tale Heart and Oth... The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Writings 4.19 avg rating — 241,799 ratings — published 1843 —91 editions Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars
The Raven The Raven 4.29 avg rating — 154,473 ratings — published 1845 —954 editions Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars
The Tell-Tale Heart The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe, Byron Glaser (Illustrator) 4.24 avg rating — 107,128 ratings — published 1843 —390 editions Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars
The Cask of Amontillado The Cask of Amontillado 4.08 avg rating — 82,390 ratings — published 1846 —318 editions Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars
The Fall of the House of Us... The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales by Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen Marlowe (Editor) 4.17 avg rating — 74,208 ratings — published 1960 —62 editions Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars
The Essential Tales and Poe... The Essential Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe, Benjamin Franklin Fisher (Editor) 4.36 avg rating — 69,568 ratings — published 1843 —17 editions Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars
The Fall of the House of Usher The Fall of the House of Usher 3.87 avg rating — 77,084 ratings — published 1839 —27 editions Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars
The Pit and the Pendulum The Pit and the Pendulum 4.15 avg rating — 69,772 ratings — published 1842 —331 editions Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars
The Black Cat The Black Cat 4.03 avg rating — 50,375 ratings — published 1843 —515 editions Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars

More books by Edgar Allan Poe…

“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”
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― Edgar Allen Poe

Polls

June 2015 Old School Classics Group Read

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