Edgar Allan Рое was an outstanding American author, poet, literary critic and theorist, who was more popular in Europe than in his native country. He was born on 19 of January 1809 in Boston in a poor actor’s family. At the age of two after his parents’ death Edgar was adopted by a rich businessman John Allan. Poe had a secure life, he received a good education. Edgar studied in school in London later in college in Richmond and finally at the University of Virginia but for one semester only. It happened because of misunderstanding and strained relations with his step-father. After he served in the Army and then was a cadet at the West Point Military Academy.
In 1827 he anonymously published his first collection of poems Tamerlane and Other Poems. Though Poe started with poems his literary works were different: he wrote detective stories, articles, worked as editor and co-editor of various magazines. In 1836 he married young Virginia Clemm, who was his cousin. Edgar devotes poems to his wife and her mother. In 1838 he became an assistant editor of Burton's Gentleman's magazine, so he could afford to publish his book Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque. Living in New York he managed to publish some of his novels which were sensation and made him popular but his happiness was not long. Fee was always very low and his family was constantly in need. The author dreamt to have his own magazine but there was no money for that. He was not even able to provide a decent medical care to his wife. He understood she was very weak “and he despaired: “It was folly to hope”” (Silverman 182). In January 1847 Virginia died because of tuberculosis being only 24 years old. He lost his mind, he had a depression and tried to overcome his pain with the help of alcohol, he drank much though “for long periods Poe was absolutely sober” (Quinn 693) when he worked writing or conducting lectures on the theory of literature.
He died in October 1849. There were several versions of what might have caused his death. Some said it was a murder or a suicide, some said it was because of alcoholism. So it is still a mystery. And his works were also mysterious. Edgar Poe had “half serious, half funny turn of mind” (Carlson 111) and that found reflection in all of his works. Poe was a writer who tried to combine incompatible things in his works. They cannot be limited by rules of one genre. He created his stories following traditional devices mixed with something new and original.
Edgar Poe is considered to be the father of detective stories. Though novels resembling detectives were written before, Poe made his stories mathematically exact. He added a significant contribution to the genre and his successors imitated him much:
The depiction of the detective as a detached gentlemanly amateur not associated with the police; the use of a first-person narrator who …