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Born to the teenage actors Elizabeth Arnold and David Poe
Jr. (in a time when acting was a highly disreputable career),
Edgar Allan Poe was raised by a Richmond, Virginia, merchant
named John Allan when both his parents died. Allan sent Poe
to the University of Virginia, but he left after a quarrel
with Allan in 1827 and sought out his father's relatives in
Baltimore. In Baltimore he published his first volume of poems,
Tamerlane and Other Poems, and later secretly married
his thirteen-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm. He moved with
his wife and her mother to Richmond, Philadelphia, and then
New York City, editing magazines and newspapers in each city
but finding it difficult to hold onto a job. Poe's horror
tales and detective stories (a genre he created) were written
to capture the fancy of the popular reading public, but he
earned his national reputation through a large number of critical
essays and sketches. With the publication of "The Raven"
(1845), Poe's fame was ensured, but he was not succeeding
as well in his personal life. His wife died in 1847, and Poe
himself was increasingly ill and drinking uncontrollably.
He died on a trip to Baltimore, four days after being found
intoxicated near a polling booth on Election Day.
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