Poe edgar allan biography sample
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Biography of Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on 19th January, 1809.
Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story, and is generally considered the inventor of the ‘detective fiction’ genre.
Edgar Allan Poe was the second child of English-born actress Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe, and actor David Poe, Jr. He was left an orphan at a very ung age however, following the abscondence of his father (in 1810) and the subsequent death of his mother (1811). After this early tragedy, Poe was taken into the home of John Allan, a successful Scottish merchant in Richmond, Virginia, who dealt in a variety of goods including tobacco, cloth, wheat, tombstones, and slaves. The Allans served as a foster family and gave him the name ‘Edgar Allan Poe’, though they never formally adopted him.
After a brief spell living in England and Scotland (where he attended a grammar school in
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Poe’s Early Life
Edgar Poe was born on January 19th, 1809 to traveling actors Eliza and David Poe. When Edgar was a baby, David abandoned the family, leaving Eliza to support three young children. In a devastating turn, Eliza contracted tuberculosis and spent the last few months of her life in Richmond. She died on December 8th, 1811 at the age of 24, leaving behind her three children. Two-year-old Edgar was taken in by Richmond couple John and Frances Allan. Edgar was never officially adopted, a cause and result of constant tensions between him and his foster father. He did not take their last name, but instead he became Edgar Allan Poe. As a teenager Poe enjoyed the life of the elite upper-class.
In 1824, a young Edgar Allan Poe was a part of a junior honor color guard that escorted the Revolutionary War General Marquis de Lafayette around Richmond, Virginia. Lafayette and the color guard stopped at Richmond’s Old Stone House to visit the Ege family, who had ass
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Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston. Poe’s father and mother, both professional actors, died before the poet was three years old, and John and Frances Allan raised him as a foster child in Richmond, Virginia. John Allan, a prosperous tobacco exporter, sent Poe to the best boarding schools and, later, to the University of Virginia, where Poe excelled academically. After less than one year of school, however, he was forced to leave the university when Allan refused to pay Poe’s gambling debts.
Poe returned briefly to Richmond, but his relationship with Allan deteriorated. In 1827, Poe moved to Boston and enlisted in the United States Army. His first collection of poems, Tamerlane, and Other Poems (George Redway), was published that year. In 1829, he published a second collection entitled Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems (Hatch & Dunning). Neither volume received significant critical or public attention. Following his Army