Edgar Allen Poe was a very famous poet and writer,Poe created many poems and stories such as The Raven, The Tall -Tale Heart, The Fall of The House of Usher and many more. (tompson 1)Edgar lived from 1809 to 1849. He was born on January 19,1809, in Boston Massachusetts but grew up in Richmond Virgina but through his many travels he lived in half a dozen eastern cities. He lived a short and tragic life. His first career was to study in law but soon went against his family and started a career in acting. His critic reviews were poor. Many critics thought his technique was bad.
Edgars father was an actor by the name of David Poe and his mother also an actress by the name of Elizabeth. edgar was the second of three children, about the time that the third child was born Edgars father died. After his father had died Edgars mother and her two yougest children went to Richmond, his brother William already had been settled with relatives in Baltimore. Poes mother was in the lastest stages of her diesease, struggling with two kids, she died. Edgar and , an infant, Rosalie, were orphaned. Poe finally was hit with the reliazation of his parents death.
In 1811on a visit of generousity, Mrs. Francis Allen learned of the situation of the Poe babies. Mrs. Allen had no babies of her own and to that she took home handsome little Edgar. Mr. John Allen didnt aprove of a permant adoption but he began to in time support the child, and became proud of his good looks and intelligence. When Edgar was six years old Mr. Allens bussiness took them to Scotland, they lived there for about five years. Edgar persued his education at the Irvin Grammer School in Irvin, Scotland. After many journeys throughtout his hildhood Edgar and the Allens returned to Richmond, Virgina.
There at the age of 11 Mr. Allen enrolled Edgar into the English and Classical School attended by sons of the more fashionable families of Richmond. There Edgar began to feel the difference between himself and the others at this school. To this Edgar the sense of injury made its self evident at home with fits of temper and rebellion for which there seemed to the family , no justification. Mr. Allen did not put up with such behavior , Mr. Allen repeatedly reminded Edgar about his “disreputable” parentage.
In Edgars college years his growing antagonism between father and son, Mr. Allen was willing to send Edgar to the University of Virgina. Edgar had gone to the university to in fact get away from the Allen house hold. This indescribable social college campus set Edgar in for a major turn around , Edgar began to gamble to where he couldnt pay off debts he incountered, when Edgar drank is sent him into a wild statof excitement. Edagr was then pulled out of the University for such behavior. Mr. Allen then out him in a low, routine job at hjis counting house. This was very humiliating or Edgar and he just couldnt bear it anymore , the answer, to leave home.
He left to Boston where he manage to publish a collection of his poems, desperate for money, he then joined the army under the name of Edgar A. Perry. Army barracks were no place for this young noblemen. Poe turned to his foster father for reconciliation, Mr. Allens then purchased Edgar out of the army, which was possible at that time. Shortly after he publisheds another set of his writings. Little more then a year after Poe decided consider a military career, he gained admission to the United States Military Academy at West Point , New York.
Edgar was of two minds about the Academy: an army career was suitable for a Virginia gentleman he longed to be, but the discipline was uncongenial. The second mind won, and Edgar deliberately provoked expulsion by cutting all drills and classes. This was it for Mr. Allen. Mrs. Allen death removed Edgars friend in the house. Edgars love life began with a woman named Sarah Elmira Royster, they got engaged but never got married because sarahs dad disapproved of the marriage . Edgar went to Charlottesville but said he would write to her everyday.
Her father intercepted every letter he wrote her and everyday since sarah never got the letters of course she never wrote back and everyday that Edgar never got a letter from her he got more and more depressed. John Allen broke off the engagement . (tompson5) In the two years after his final rupture with Mr. Allan, Poe lived for a considerable time in Baltimore with his aunt, Mrs. Maria (Poe) Clemm. She was a poor seamstress, but she welcomed Poe into her home and took care of him. Outwardly, it was a do-nothing period for him, but inwardly it was significant.
He wrote a group of npublished short stories. Even more importantly, he began to dramatize himself as one whom “unmerciful disaster followed fast and followed faster”. He probably had an inherited emotional instability which fed his feeling of persecution. Once established in his job, he brought Mrs. Clemm and her daughter, Virginia, to live with him. A little later he married his cousin, Virginia, who was some years younger than he. From that time on, the three formed a household. Throughout all his vicissitudes, the two women, his wife, Virginia, and her mother were unfailingly devoted to him.
Much f the time, Mrs. Clemm kept boarders to make a home for Poe and Virginia. Mrs. Clemm found no fault in him; at his worst, to her he was “poor Eddie”. Her motherliness cradled all his weaknesses and eccentricities. (He called her “Muddie. “) In her way, Virginia was equally devoted. She was sweet and gentle, but rather simple-minded. She could not follow the wild flights of Poe’s erratic genius, but she gave him an adoring, unquestioned admiration which was incense to his spirit. She found a childish pleasure and absorption clipping and pasting the long scrolls on which he wrote.
Poe, in turn, showed his best self to them. Here, where there was no will beside his own, where two loyal satellites revolved about the central sun of his ego, he was at his best and gentlest. He was affectionate toward Mrs. Clemm and increasingly tender and loving to Virginia, an invalid who was slowly dying of tuberculosis. The pathetic little family made its last move to a tiny cottage in Fordham, then a village about thirteen miles from New York. Mrs. Clemm set about making the place habitable, setting aside the best room of four as “dear Eddie’s” study.
They managed hrough the summer, but as autumn came on, there was not even fuel to warm the house. Virginia grew steadily worse. Poe sank deeper into melancholia. In the depth of winter, Virginia died. With the loss of his wife, Poe’s last hold on reality vanished. He worked feverishly at writing a book, Eureka, which he believed would be an expression of profound truth. It was more nearly a curious hodge-podge of unproven scientific statement and wild imagining, springing from his disturbed state. He wandered from one city to another, drifted back to Richmond and on to Baltimore, where he died.
