Edgar Allan Poe
Poe didn't earn a cent from his most famous poem, 'The Raven', having published it first in a newspaper for free and thereby losing any and all future copyright monies. The original title of 'The Raven' was 'To Lenore' but upon having dinner with and learning of the great writer's recently deceased pet bird, which just happened to be a raven, Poe reworked the poem to include the black bird as a central figure. Poe wrote 'The Raven' with the intent of creating what he called an 'adult fairy tale' and when asked why he didn't start the poem with the traditional 'Once upon a time' but used 'Once upon a midnight dreary' Poe replied, 'In my 'time' it's always 'midnight dreary.' ' All of Poe's stories took place at night, or if a day scene was required, it was the bleakest, foulest day of the year. There is some mystery surrounding the actual conditions of his death. In October 1849, he was found lying in a gutter, drunk, barely conscious and wearing someone else's clothing.
He died shortly thereafter of apparent alcohol poisoning. However, some historians believe that there may have been other reasons for his untimely demise.
The most common theory is that he was a victim of a political kidnapping and made to vote in a local mayoral election while dressed up in different clothes and under the influence of massive amounts of alcohol, so that he would not remember anything. Others believe that he may have had a massive brain tumor that led to a stroke; this theory is aided somewhat by the fact that Poe had a rather large, oddly-shaped head. In the September 1996 edition of the 'Maryland Medical Journal,' Physician R. Michael Benitez - who ran the coronary care unit at the Baltimore V.A. Medical Center and taught at the University of Maryland Medical Center - published his conclusion that Poe died of rabies contracted via an animal bite, probably from a pet cat.
Poe's symptoms and death indicate he suffered from rabies, a viral encephalitis that attacks the brain and central nervous system. Rabies - which is transmitted from the saliva of an infected animal to the open wound of a new host - is characterized by wide fluctuations in pulse, perspiration, delirium, coma and confusion. A patient typically seems to recover, then suffers a relapse.
The clinical course of rabies is four days, after which the patient dies without treatment. These were Poe's symptoms, and his case lasted four days before he died. According to Benitez, only twice in recorded history has anyone survived rabies, and 'they weren't quite the same people they were before' as rabies causes irrevocable brain damage. Poe kept cats, and although there is no record of his ever having been bitten, Benitez noted that only 27 percent of recent rabies victims ever remembered the bite. The incubation period can last up to a year.
In Poe's time, there was no treatment for rabies, which was invariably fatal. For Poe, it was almost a case of life (and death) imitating art, an end as inevitable and as gruesome as the sufferings of his tortured characters. Poe met during the Englishman's 1842 tour of America.
On March 6, 1842, Poe and Dickens arranged to meet while he was in Philadelphia. Dickens had been greatly impressed by Poe's ability to guess the ending of his 1841 serialized novel 'Barnaby Rudge'. In the 'Saturday Evening Post' edition of May 1841, Poe had reviewed the work, which was being published serially in a magazine a chapter at a time. At the meeting, Dickens agreed to consider writing for the magazine that Poe edited, 'Graham's', and to try to find an English publisher for Poe's 'Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque'. Nothing of substance came from either promise. Curiously, Dickens owned a pet raven named Grip, and he had introduced the loquacious raven into 'Barnaby Rudge' as a character. In his May 1841 review, Poe commented on the use of the talking raven, saying the bird should have loomed larger in the plot.
Literary experts surmise that the talking raven of 'Barnaby Rudge' inspired Poe's most famous poem, 'The Raven', published in 1845. After Grip died in 1841, Dickens had the bird mounted.
It now resides at the Free Library on Logan Circle in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. When Edgar was two and a half years old, he became-for all intents and purposes-orphaned, as his father had abandoned him and his mother died of tuberculosis. He was then taken in by John Allan and his wife, Frances Keeling nee Valentine (by whom a poem of the name 'My Valentine' was later inspired). He later endured when life took his foster parents from him in an insult-to-injury and sort-of deja-vu way. As Elizabeth Poe died of tuberculosis in 1811, Frances Allan died of chronic illnesses in 1829; and as David Poe left Edgar and his two siblings with Elizabeth, John Allan technically abandoned him (and Frances) when he went on multiple sprees of infidelity throughout his marriage-and he estranged himself from him partly because of being held to account for his infidelities. He also left him out of his will, in which he also effectively disavowed two of his out-of-wedlock children (the only two of whom he even acknowledged, albe begrudgingly acknowledged, in any explicit detail)-noting only that he had told his second wife about his affair with their mother before they married in 1830, and that he essentially could not have been happier when the one child died and thus became one less heir. As for John Allan's second wife, Louisa Gabriella Patterson, she became a thorn in Edgar's side and contributed to the increasing impossibility of any reconciliation of Edgar and John, whom (like Edgar's biological father) died of alcoholism.
During the last time that Edgar ever saw John, Louisa didn't even try to stop her husband from threatening her step-foster son or otherwise facilitate any olive-branch extension, not even withstanding that her husband had advanced edema that distress from his final meeting with his foster son must've only exacerbated. In a strange turn of events, his first post-mortem biography was written and told by his greatest literary enemy, Rufus Wilmot Griswold, who often invented details of Poe's life in order to libel him (as for example his supposed alcoholism, since then Poe had congenital intolerance to it and he was unable to drink alcohol), caused among other reasons by their rivalry for the love of writer Frances Sargent Osgood. It turned into one of the most important cases of defamation in the entire 19th century.
Welcome to PoeStories.com by Robert Giordano This site contains short stories and poems by (Edgar Allen Poe is a common misspelling), story, and linked and definitions for educational reading. It also includes a short, a of Poe's life, and to other Poe sites. Most people recognize Poe by his famous poem,. Others may have read one of his more popular dark and creepy tales like,. Poe wrote quite a few gothic stories about,.
Edgar Allan Poe Poems
Many modern books and movies have 'borrowed' ideas from Poe. Some of Poe's stories were not well accepted in his day because people were just not ready for them- they were too scary. Many people don't know that Edgar Allan Poe also wrote stories about, and a famous.
Poe invented the detective story with tales like. Sherlock Holmes and other fictional detectives would later be based on the characters that Poe created. Poe wrote and even a few strange little. He attempted to explain the composition of the universe in a way that sounds a little like quantum physics. Explore this site and you'll see why I think Edgar Allan Poe deserves to be recognized as one of the most original, imaginative, and ingenious authors of our society. Summaries Poe wrote many stories on many different topics. If you don't know where to start, you can browse short, so you can find something that interests you.
Don't worry, I don't give away the endings!! Wordlist This site makes it easy for you read Poe's stories. Poe knew several languages and had quite a large vocabulary. Poe's works are not hard to read but sometimes he uses obscure words or references that the average user may not know. Because of this, I've created an ever growing containing many of these words and their definitions. When a word in the wordlist appears in any story, it becomes hyperlinked to its definition. Gallery In the, you'll find a large collection of Edgar Allan Poe portraits and daguerreotypes.
Learn the details behind each of Poe's commonly recognized portraits. In the section, browse a constantly updated selection of art from current artists who were inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, his poetry, and prose. Artists who have created paintings, drawings, or illustrations based on Poe or his works, are invited to about featuring your work on this site.
The also features photography from various trips to Edgar Allan Poe historic sites, like the ones in. About this Site Poestories.com was built using 100% HTML and CSS. That means no tables were used for layout. It means this site should look nearly identical in every modern browser on or, like. Finally it means this site is fully functional with all styles turned off and is accessible to people with disabilities.
This site also works on iPhones, iPads, and Android phones. Enjoy your visit and don't forget to sign the. News 2017.07.10 monday Well, I haven't posted in a while but it looks like some mischievous miscreant hacked their way into the site and tried to add their spammy links to the. Because they tried to put links in the wrong place, it caused an error that prevented any of the stories or poems from loading. I just fixed the site and I also have their IP address. =) I'll be giving the site a much needed update very soon.
2013.10.23 wednesday I just launched the NEW version of the web site. It LOOKS the same on desktop browsers but the site is now optimized for iPhone, iPad, and Android devices!! If you find any glitches.
I'll be adding more content and features in coming weeks. 2013.01.19 saturday Happy Birthday to Edgar Allan Poe!!! To remember Poe on his birthday, get some friends together and read one of his poems, like. 2012.10.31 wednesday Happy Halloween Poe fans!
Tonight is an especially good night to read some of Edgar's gory tales. Everyone always reads.
Try something different tonight, like. 2012.10.07 sunday Edgar Allan Poe died on this day in 1849.
He was found semi-conscious in an alley in Baltimore and he died soon afterwards, in the local hospital. There are many theories about his death but no one really knows what happened. 2012.08.29 wednesday BACK FROM THE DEAD!! We recently lost our database server and we're still trying to recover the data. For now, we're using an older backup of our site. You can once again read all of Poe's best works. Hopefully we will recover all of the guestbook entries, news, and other updates to the site.
You'll notice that the news items below are from over a year ago.