Poe, Edgar Allan (1809–1849)

Edgar Allan Poe's darkly imaginative works can also be interpreted on a psychological level, with his characters portraying different aspects of the self. His fictional detective, Inspector Dupin, was an original creation, and the forerunner of many other investigators in this genre.

US writer and poet. His short stories are renowned for their horrific atmosphere, as in ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ (1839) and ‘The Masque of the Red Death’ (1842), and for their acute reasoning (ratiocination), as in ‘The Gold Bug’ (1843) and ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ (1841, in which the investigators Legrand and Dupin anticipate the character of Sherlock Holmes by Scottish writer Arthur Conan Doyle). His poems include ‘The Raven’ (1845). His novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838) has attracted critical attention.

Poe, born in Boston, was orphaned in 1811 and joined the army in 1827 but was court-martialled in 1830 for deliberate neglect of duty. He failed to earn a living by writing, became an alcoholic, and in 1847 lost his wife (commemorated in his poem ‘Annabel Lee’). His verse, of haunting lyric beauty (for example, ‘Ulalume’ and ‘The Bells’), influenced the French Symbolists. The cause of his death has been debated. Poe had a history of opiate and alcohol abuse, though his family maintained that he had recently abstained from both. In 1996 a US doctor suggested that he may have died of rabies.

Poe was orphaned in 1811 and taken in by the wealthy Allan family of Richmond, Virginia. He was, however, disowned by the Allans when he was expelled from both the University of Virginia and West Point. He became editor of the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond, and later of Graham's Magazine. Poe was the first US poet to become internationally known and admired.