Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston in 1809 to actor parents. Before he turned two, his parents passed away, and Edgar found himself in Richmond, in the home of merchant John Allan, who never formally adopted him. His relationship with his foster father was never good, and it worsened when Allan forced Edgar to leave his studies at the University of Virginia, as he was unwilling to cover his expenses. In 1830, Edgar entered the United States Military Academy at West Point, from which he was expelled the following year after deliberately causing a scandal to spite his foster father. He then worked for a long period at various newspapers in Richmond, Philadelphia, and New York for livelihood reasons, while simultaneously earning a reputation as a credible critic. "The Raven and Other Poems," published in 1845, established him overnight as a writer, though it did not alleviate the poverty he had lived in all his life up to that point. In 1836, he married his fourteen-year-old cousin Virginia, who died of tuberculosis eleven years later. He died in 1849, an alcoholic and opium addict, constantly chasing the vision of the lost Virginia, and was buried next to her in Baltimore, as he wished.