Edgar Allen Poe

Throughout literature, an author's works almost always reflect their mood and character. Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer whose short stories and poems reflected his dramatic moods. One of   Poe's poems, "The Raven," is about a raven that flies into the home of a sad and lonely man. This poem best expresses Poe's sense of despair and gloominess because the literary elements used in the poem are a constant reference to them. He was known for using various writing techniques such as Gothic techniques and German romanticism rather than American experience. Poe's writings have been debated since his death, but his works have remained popular and many major American and European writers have professed their artistic debt to him. . Poe's work as an editor, a poet, and a critic had a profound impact on American and international literature. His stories mark him as one of the originators of both horror and detective fiction. Many anthologies credit him as the "architect" of the modern short story. He was also one of the first critics to focus primarily on the effect of the style and of the structure in a literary work.

Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 19, 1809. Poe's father and mother were both professional actors and died before the poet was three. Poe was orphaned in his early childhood and was raised by John Allan, a successful businessman of Richmond, Virginia. Taken by the Allan family to England at the age of six, Poe was placed in a private school. Upon returning to the United States in 1820, he continued to study in private schools. He attended the University of Virginia for a year, but in 1827 his foster father, displeased by the young man's drinking and gambling, refused to pay his debts and forced him to work as a clerk. Poe, disliking his new duties intensely, quit the job, thuse stranging Allan, and went to Boston. There his first book, Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), was published anonymously. Shortly afterward Poe...