Edgar Allan Poe studied in England for five years, from 1815 till 1820. In 1826, he entered the University of Virginia but stayed only for a year. Although he was a good student, Edgar ran up huge amounts of gambling debt that he refused to pay. Edgar was then engaged to Sarah Elmira Royster but John Allan broke the engagement. Lacking any means of financial support, he enrolled into the army. He had by then already written and published his first book “Tamerlane and other Poems” at his own expenses.
In Boston on May 26, 1827, Poe enlisted in The United States Army as a private using the name, Edgar A. Perry. After two years of service, during which he was promoted to the rank of Sergeant major, he secured, with Mr. Allan’s aid, a discharge from the Army and went to Baltimore. Poe moved to Baltimore to live with his aunt, Maria Clemm, and his first cousin Virginia His father sent him small amounts of money until he received an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at WestPoint. After another quarrel with Allan, Poe no longer received aid from his foster father. Poe then took the only method of release from the Academy, and got himself dismissed on March 6, 1831. In May 16, Poe married 13-year-old Virginia Clemn. Then, he got fired from his job of editor of the “Southern Literary Messenger”, due to his drinking habits, and went to New York City with Virginia in 1837. From 1838 to 1844, however, Poe lived in Philadelphia where he edited magazines and became a feared yet respected critic. At that time, Poe had also started writing mystery stories. 1844, Poe returned to New York City and worked on the “Evening Mirror”. He later edited and owned the “Broadway Journal”. In 1845,“ The Raven And Other Poems” won Poe fame worldwide. The following year, he rented Fordham Cottage. There he wrote “The Literati of New York City for Godey’s Lady’s Book”. Virginia Clemn went down with a serious illness and died a year later, on January 30. Poe took it very hard. He went back to Richmond in 1849 and got interested in several women including the Poetess, Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman, Mrs. Charles Richmond and the widow, Mrs. Sarah Elmira Shelton, whom he had known as Royster in his boyhood. In the end, became engaged to his childhood sweetheart, Elmira Royster However, when he went to bring Mrs. Clemn to the wedding, he got involved in a drinking debauch and was found on the streets of Baltimore in a dire condition and taken unconscious to the Washington College Hospital, where he died on the morning of Sunday, October 7, 1849. He was buried in the yard of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, Maryland.
Edgar Allan Poe was a writer noted for consistencies in the prevalent motifs of his works, and his focus on the conflict between good and evil as a major component of these central themes. Edgar Allan Poe’s central motifs, which include the conflict between good and evil, man’s inner struggle with conscience, and death or loss, are present in a many of his works. Poe’s “The Raven”, “Fall of the House of Usher”, and “Black Cat” all demonstrate these common motifs and exemplify variations of the role of the narrator in supporting the central themes. It is clear that Edgar Allan Poe was obsessed with the topic of death and it is even clearer that he had an extremely morbid imagination. Many critics have tried to link this with either the death of his mother (who died when Poe was only three years old) or the death of his young wife Virginia, whom he married when she was thirteen and who died at twenty-four.
Perhaps as a result of the many personal traumas he endured, Edgar Allan Poe was unafraid of taking his readers for a walk on the dark side. “Who shall say where the one ends, and the other begins?” Poe’s compelling use of descriptive language and symbolic imagery were masterful in any literary form -- in short stories like “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Black Cat, “The Masque of the Red Death,” or in poems like “The Raven” and “Annabel Lee.”
In the world of literature, Edgar Allan Poe is amongst the popular authors. Poe's source of happiness was writing poetry, but he also raised the short story to an art form. His dark, gothic tales of mystery and imagination had heavy influence on the modern thriller. A master of horror tales and detective stories, Edgar Allan Poe has been given the title of “The Father of Modern Detective Stories”.
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