Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston on January 19, 1809, the son of actors Eliza and David Poe Jr. Before he turned three his father had vanished and his mother had died of tuberculosis, and he was raised by John and Frances Allan, a merchant family in Richmond. From that unsettled start came a writer who would help invent the detective story, sharpen the short story into a precise instrument of dread, and publish "The Raven", one of the most recognised poems in the English language.
Poe arrived into a theatrical family already on the edge of ruin. His father, David Poe Jr., left the household when Edgar was an infant, and in December 1811 his mother, Eliza, a popular actress, died in Richmond at twenty-four. The toddler was taken in by the tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife, Frances, whose surname he later carried as his middle name, though Allan never formally adopted him and the two men quarrelled for the rest of Allan's life.
The writing that followed was relentless and often poorly paid. In 1841 "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" introduced C. Auguste Dupin, the analytical amateur sleuth who became the template for Sherlock Holmes. "The Tell-Tale Heart", "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Pit and the Pendulum" refined a short-story craft built on a single, carefully engineered effect. When "The Raven" appeared in January 1845 it made him famous almost overnight, though it earned him very little money.
Poe died in Baltimore on October 7, 1849, at forty, after being found delirious on the street in clothes that were not his own. The cause of his death has never been settled, a final mystery fitting for the man who taught readers to love one.
Key people: Edgar Allan Poe