Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849), American poet, a master of the horror tale, credited with practically inventing the detective story.

Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts, to parents who were itinerant actors. His father David Poe Jr. died probably in 1810 and his mother Elizabeth Hopkins Poe in 1811. Edgar was taken into the home of a Richmond merchant John Allan and brought up partly in England (1815-20), where he attended Manor School at Stoke Newington. Never legally adopted, Poe took Allan's name for his middle name.

Poe attended the University of Virginia (1826), but was expelled for not paying his gambling debts. This led to a quarrel with Allan, who later disowned him. In 1827 Poe joined the U.S. Army as a common soldier under assumed name and age. In 1830 Poe entered West Point and was dishonorably discharged next year, for intentional neglect of his duties.

Little is known about his life in this time, but in 1833 he lived in Baltimore with his father's sister. After winning a prize of $50 for the short story "MS Found in a Bottle," he started a career as a staff member of various magazines, among others the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond (1835-37), Burton's Gentleman's Magazine in Philadelphia (1839-40), and Graham's Magazine (1842-43). During these years he wrote some of his best-known stories.

In 1836 Poe married his 13-year-old cousin Virginia Clemm. She burst a blood vessel in 1842, and remained a virtual invalid until her death from tuberculosis five years later. After the death of his wife, Poe began to lose his struggle with drinking and drugs. He addressed the famous poem "Annabel Lee" (1849) to her.

Poe's first collection, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, appeared in 1840. It contained one of his most famous works, "The Fall of the House of Usher." During the early 1840s Poe's best-selling work was The Conchologist's First Book (1839). The dark poem of lost love, "The Raven," brought Poe national fame, when it appeared in 1845. The Murders in the Rue Morgue(1841) and The Purloined Letter are among Poe's most famous detective stories. Poe was also one of the most prolific literary journalists.

Short Stories:
The Assignation
Berenice
The Black Cat
The Cask of Amontillado
A Descent into the Maelstrom
The Devil in the Belfry
The Domain of Arnheim
Eleonora
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
The Fall of the House of Usher
The Gold-Bug

The Imp of the Perverse
The Island of the Fay
Landor's Cottage
The Masque of the Red Death
Mesmeric Revelation
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
The Oblong Box
The Pit and the Pendulum
The Premature Burial
The Purloined Letter

Silence -- a Fable
The Tell-Tale Heart
The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherezade
Von Kempelen and his Discovery
William Wilson
Poetry
Alone
Annabel Lee
Eldorado
Lenore
Sonnet: To Science
The Bells
The Raven
To Helen
Ulalume