Mrs. Schneider
Honors English III
01 March 2013
Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe was labeled as one of America’s major writers (Encyclopedia of World Biography). He wrote poetry, fiction, poetry, criticism and he was a magazine editor (Encyclopedia of World Biography). He was best known as an editor and critic; his short stories didn’t have that big of an audience (Encyclopedia of World Biography). Most of Poe’s stories were written in a gothic style, and had a dark, mysterious mood to them. Edgar Allan Poe was born January 19, 1809 (Encyclopedia of World Biography). By the time Poe was 3 years old; he had lost his mother and father and was separated from his older brother and younger sister (Encyclopedia of World Biography). He went to live with the Allan family, but the family never did adopt Poe. When Poe reached adolescence, he and John Allan developed bad feelings amongst them; John Allan did not agree with Poe’s literary inclinations (Encyclopedia of World Biography). In 1826, Poe entered the University of Virginia, but had no money to pay for school, so he turned to gambling to make income. In eight months Poe had lost $2,000 and eventually stopped attending school (Encyclopedia of World Biography). He later left for Boston where he enlisted in the U.S. Army for five years. By January 1929, he had rose to be sergeant major in the Army and he had released a few poems, but wasn’t recognized for them (Encyclopedia of World Biography). In 1830, Poe left the Army and started focusing more on his literary work (Encyclopedia of World Biography). Poe was a part of the gothic literary movement. Almost all of his literary pieces portrayed death or had a dark mood to them. “In his gothic tales, Poe also employed an essentially symbolic, almost allegorical method which gives such works as “The Fall of the House of Usher” an enigmatic quality that accounts for their enduring interest and also links them with the symbolic works of Nathaniel