Edgar Allan Poe (Author of The Complete Stories and Poems)

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Edgar Allan Poe

Born

in Boston, Massachusetts, The United States

January 19, 1809

Died

October 07, 1849

Website

Genre

Horror, Poetry, Mystery

Influences

James Hogg, Thomas de Quincey, E.T.A. Hoffmann, John Milton, Charles ...more

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The name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead. His works have been in print since 1827 and include such literary classics as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, and The Fall of the House of Usher. This versatile writer鈥檚 oeuvre includes short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, and hundreds of essays and book reviews. He is widely acknowledged as the inventor of the modern detective story and an innovator in the science fiction genre, but he made his living as America鈥檚 first great literary critic and theoretician. Poe鈥檚 reputation today rests primarily on his tales of terror as well as on his haunting lyric poetry.

Just as the bizarre c The name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead. His works have been in print since 1827 and include such literary classics as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, and The Fall of the House of Usher. This versatile writer鈥檚 oeuvre includes short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, and hundreds of essays and book reviews. He is widely acknowledged as the inventor of the modern detective story and an innovator in the science fiction genre, but he made his living as America鈥檚 first great literary critic and theoretician. Poe鈥檚 reputation today rests primarily on his tales of terror as well as on his haunting lyric poetry.

Just as the bizarre characters in Poe鈥檚 stories have captured the public imagination so too has Poe himself. He is seen as a morbid, mysterious figure lurking in the shadows of moonlit cemeteries or crumbling castles. This is the Poe of legend. But much of what we know about Poe is wrong, the product of a biography written by one of his enemies in an attempt to defame the author鈥檚 name.

The real Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809. Edgar was the second of three children. His other brother William Henry Leonard Poe would also become a poet before his early death, and Poe鈥檚 sister Rosalie Poe would grow up to teach penmanship at a Richmond girls鈥� school. Within three years of Poe鈥檚 birth both of his parents had died, and he was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia while Poe鈥檚 siblings went to live with other families. Mr. Allan would rear Poe to be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe had dreams of being a writer in emulation of his childhood hero the British poet Lord Byron. Early poetic verses found written in a young Poe鈥檚 handwriting on the backs of Allan鈥檚 ledger sheets reveal how little interest Poe had in the tobacco business.

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Edgar Allan Poe鈥檚 books

Average rating: 4.12 · 1,817,741 ratings · 72,988 reviews · 10,415 distinct works 鈥� Similar authors

	The Complete Stories and Poems 4.40 avg rating — 288,910 ratings — published 1849 — 122 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Writings 4.19 avg rating — 243,146 ratings — published 1843	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Raven 4.29 avg rating — 161,377 ratings — published 1845 — 989 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe, Byron Glaser (Illustrator) 4.24 avg rating — 114,161 ratings — published 1843 — 429 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Cask of Amontillado 4.08 avg rating — 84,861 ratings — published 1846 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Fall of the House of Usher 3.86 avg rating — 81,781 ratings — published 1839 — 872 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales by Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen Marlowe (Editor) 4.17 avg rating — 74,431 ratings — published 1960 — 132 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Essential Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe, Benjamin Franklin Fisher (Editor) 4.36 avg rating — 69,825 ratings — published 1843 — 17 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Pit and the Pendulum 4.15 avg rating — 70,739 ratings — published 1842 — 176 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Black Cat 4.03 avg rating — 53,159 ratings — published 1843 — 553 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Polls

June 2015 Old School Classics Group Read

1841, The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe 160 pages

10 votes, 26.3%

1868, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, 449 pages

9 votes, 23.7%

1899, The Awakening by Kate Chopin, 195 pages

5 votes, 13.2%

1886, The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy, 445 pages

5 votes, 13.2%

1818, Persuasion by Jane Austen, 249 pages

3 votes, 7.9%

1870, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne, 394 pages

3 votes, 7.9%

1794, The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe, 654 pages

2 votes, 5.3%

1830, The Red and the Black by Stendhal, 608 pages

1 vote, 2.6%

1877, Little Lord Fauntleroy by Frances Hodgson Burnett, 164 pages

0 votes, 0.0%

38 total votes

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