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“Art is the reproduction of what the senses perceive
in nature through the veil of the soul.”
Orphaned as a child and disowned by his foster father
while a young man, Poe’s life was ruled by bad luck and
bad behavior. Drinking and gambling got him dismissed
from the University of Virginia, and he was courtmartialed
at West Point for failing to attend either church or his
duties. He married his cousin when she was only 13,
and buried her, a victim of tuberculosis, at the age of 24.
Though as editor he built Graham's Magazine into
the most popular periodical of its day, he was fired from
almost every job he had, and his independent ventures
were all financial failures. He won numerous prizes for
both his poetry and short stories but spent most of
his life broke, died penniless, and was buried without
a tombstone.
Through it all he kept writing. His verse was the
pinnacle of Gothic pop, and his fiction was remarkably
original and varied—he wrote horror, science fiction,
adventure, and the first modern detective story, The
Murders in the Rue Morgue. H.P. Lovecraft, a master of
the modern horror story, said, “Poe’s weird tales are alive
in a manner that few can ever hope to be.” |
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Edgar Allan Poe
(1809–1849) |
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