Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was born to poor parents in Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States in the year 1809. He found himself an orphan before he was three years old. His godfather, John Allan was a wealthy Virginian who gave Poe the best education in England and America. While Poe was still in his teens, a quarrel with his godfather estranged him from his family. From then onwards, poverty and illness were Poe’s constant companions. But so was brilliance, as Poe published three books of poems by the time he was twenty-one years old. In 1833, he won $50 with his short story in a newspaper contest. His poem ‘The Raven’ was famous throughout America when it came out in 1845. Poe’s horror stories still fill the readers with dread even after so many years and his stories of adventure and deduction set parameters for other writers to follow. Edgar Allan Poe passed away in Baltimore, Maryland, aged just forty years.