Notes

Edgar Allan Poe's Works:

Tales

"The Black Cat"
"The Cask of Amontillado"
"A Descent into the Maelström"
"The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar"
"The Fall of the House of Usher"
"The Gold-Bug"
"Hop-Frog"
"The Imp of the Perverse"
"Ligeia"
"The Masque of the Red Death"
"The Murders in the Rue Morgue"
"The Oval Portrait"
"The Pit and the Pendulum"
"The Premature Burial"
"The Purloined Letter"
"The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether"
"The Tell-Tale Heart"

Poetry

"Al Aaraaf"
"Annabel Lee"
"The Bells"
"The City in the Sea"
"The Conqueror Worm"
"A Dream Within a Dream"
"Eldorado"
"Eulalie"
"The Haunted Palace"
"To Helen"
"Lenore"
"Tamerlane"
"The Raven"
"Ulalume"

Other Works

Politian (1835) – Poe's only play
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838) – Poe's only complete novel
"The Balloon-Hoax" (1844) – A journalistic hoax printed as a true story
"The Philosophy of Composition" (1846) – Essay
Eureka: A Prose Poem (1848) – Essay
"The Poetic Principle" (1848) – Essay
"The Light-House" (1849) – Poe's last incomplete work

On October 3, 1849, Poe was found on the streets of Baltimore delirious, "in great distress, and... in need of immediate assistance", according to the man who found him, Joseph W. Walker. He was taken to the Washington College Hospital, where he died on Sunday, October 7, 1849, at 5:00 in the morning. Poe was never coherent long enough to explain how he came to be in his dire condition, and, oddly, was wearing clothes that were not his own. Poe is said to have repeatedly called out the name "Reynolds" on the night before his death, though it is unclear to whom he was referring. Some sources say Poe's final words were "Lord help my poor soul." All medical records, including his death certificate, have been lost. Newspapers at the time reported Poe's death as "congestion of the brain" or "cerebral inflammation", common euphemisms for deaths from disreputable causes such as alcoholism. The actual cause of death remains a mystery; from as early as 1872, cooping was commonly believed to have been the cause, and speculation has included delirium tremens, heart disease, epilepsy, syphilis, meningeal inflammation, cholera and rabies.

Edgar Allen Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.

He was born Edgar Poe in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 19, 1809, the second child of actress Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe and actor David Poe, Jr. He had an elder brother, William Henry Leonard Poe, and a younger sister, Rosalie Poe. Edgar may have been named after a character in William Shakespeare's King Lear, a play the couple was performing in 1809. His father abandoned their family in 1810, and his mother died a year later from consumption (pulmonary tuberculosis). Poe was then taken into the home of John Allan, a successful Scottish merchant in Richmond, Virginia, who dealt in a variety of goods including tobacco, cloth, wheat, tombstones, and slaves. The Allans served as a foster family and gave him the name "Edgar Allan Poe", though they never formally adopted him.