Edgar Allan Poe - Biography

Hey guys! This is Ire. This is my first blog post since I uploaded my bio! :) Today in English Class, we were discussing evocative poem, "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe. Poe gained much of recognition by writing pieces such as “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Fall of the House of Usher”, which are considered as literary classics noways. Despite his much of recognition and literary achievements today, he lived a very poorly due to lack in finance relatively. Let's figure out why!

Poe was born in Boston, 19th of January, 1809 and died in 7th of October, 1849. Age 30. Poe, didn’t really get to know his parents as his father left him at early age and his mother passed from tuberculosis (when he was three). In doing so, he goes to live with a successful merchant family, John and Frances Valentine Allan. Nevertheless, he had struggles in relationship with John since he preferred Poe to participate in family’s business albeit Poe wanted to excel in literature. This made John not to support Poe in funds when he was in University of Virginia in 1826, which caused him to do gambling for paying his university funds, however, drowning in debt. What makes the matter worse, was loss of her fiancée as she married someone else. Afterwards, he joined an army. Later, he continued his career of writing poem with condition of a poverty. He then got a temporary job in printing company, married to his cousin who’s 13 years old when he was 27 years old. It seems fine until this stage. But Poe didn’t like his job and quit the job, barely selling his pieces of poetry and lived a poor life. Soon, his lover Virginia, died from tuberculosis and made Poe’s life even devastating. Therefore, he suffered from serious mental pains and heavily relied on alcoholic to relieve his sufferings until his death in 1849. This was when he wrote the piece "The raven". There are still lots of debates about the causes of his death. The most plausible theory is that alcoholism and a loss of his lover. I believe that his miserable conditions of his life made him the most enduring American Poet and gave us many of poetries that are still considered as compelling today.