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Edgar Allan Poe, "The Raven"

BIOGRAPHY

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[From The Norton Introduction to Literature]

(1809–1849)

Orphaned before he was three, Edgar Poe was adopted by John Allan, a wealthy Richmond businessman. Poe received his early schooling in Richmond and in England before a brief, unsuccessful stint at the University of Virginia. After serving for two years in the army, he was appointed to West Point in 1830 but was expelled within the year for cutting classes. Living in Baltimore with his grandmother, aunt, and cousin Virginia (whom he married in 1835, when she was thirteen), Poe eked out a precarious living as an editor; his keenedged reviews earned him numerous literary enemies.His two-volume Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque received little critical attention when published in 1839, but his poem “The Raven” (1845) made him a literary celebrity. After his wife's death of tuberculosis in 1847, Poe, already an alcoholic, became increasingly erratic and two years later he died mysteriously in Baltimore. His poems and stories have been collected in many editions.

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