Jan 19, 1809 – Oct 7, 1849
Poet, Writer, Editor, Critic
American
“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”
“I have great faith in fools -- my friends call it self-confidence.”
The cause of Poe’s death is still a mystery. Before he died in a hospital he was found semiconscious and dressed in unusual attire. Many widely different theories exist on Poe’s actual cause of death.
Edgar Allan Poe was far ahead of his time in the written expression of the human mind’s hallucinations and dreams. He created ideas and techniques, like in his stories “The Tale-Tell Heart,” “The Pit and the Pendulum” and “The Black Cat,” still used in modern horror stories and movies. It was probably no coincidence that his own life was full of adversity. He always wore black (even in the heat of the summer), his face looked pained, as if from nightmares, and he seldom smiled. A theme in many of his writings is the stoppage of a beautiful woman. When he was just three, he watched the slow and agonizing stoppage of his mother from tuberculosis. He married his 13-year-old cousin, and, when she began coughing, Poe would not admit it was tuberculosis. Unfortunately, it was, and his young wife stopped at the same age his mother had stopped. Poe’s unfulfilled dream was to own and edit his own magazine. He worked for various magazines owned by others, and, even though his writings greatly increased their circulation, he made very little money and seldom stayed at one place longer than a year or two. When he was between jobs, which was sometimes years at a time, he would spend his time writing and working in his flower garden -- he loved flowers. Poe’s famous poem, “The Raven,” was an instant hit but earned him little money. Although he continued to write during the final years of his life, he was plagued with illness and grief. His body was found unconscious and poorly dressed in the street. Four days later he stopped.