The Philosophy of Composition

Edgar Allan Poe was an American poet, short story writer, and essayist. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1809 and died in 1849 in Baltimore, Maryland. He is famous for his interest in the macabre and the horrific and is considered an example of American Romanticism and, specifically, of Dark or Gothic Romanticism. Poe is credited with inventing the detective story, and he is recognized for his contribution to the development of the short story and the horror genre. After his death, his fame extended beyond the United States to Europe and Latin America. He was celebrated and admired by key European writers such as Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Franz Kafka, and by the Latin Americans Jorge Luis Borges and Carlos Fuentes, among others.

Poe was the son of traveling actors Elizabeth Arnold and David Poe. He was orphaned as a young child, both of his parents having died of tuberculosis, and he was sent to live with the family of John Allan, a tobacco merchant from Richmond, Virginia. With the Allan family, he lived in England and Scotland before returning to the United States. He studied briefly at the University of Virginia but had to leave because of the gambling debt he accrued.