TIL: Edgar Allan Poe

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It’s October! For some people, October’s a month long holiday to celebrate the macabre days of Halloween or Samhain. In this thread, let’s talk about one of the more appropriate writers for this month.

  1. Born in Boston, Massachusetts

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to an alcoholic, absent father and a mother who died a year later, Edgar and his two siblings “were left on their own”.

  1. By the age of 13 Edgar had written enough poetry to publish a book. Though his principal might have discouraged its being published.

  2. Poe only wrote one novel, “Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket”,

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but, he is credited with defining the modern short story. He didn’t stop there, and did go on to pen “Tamerlane”, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, numerous essays, satires, humor tales and several book reviews (which also earned him a reputation as you’ll later learn.)

  1. Additionally, Poe is credited as father of the modern detective story, and he was one of the early adopters of the science fiction genre.

  2. Poe was a rather harsh literary critic, having earned the name ‘Tomahawk Man,’ and wrote a scathing review of Rufus Wilmot Griswold’s work. In turn, Griswold wrote a false obituary under a different name and an unauthorized biography of Poe after this death. Many of the falsehoods Griswold wrote about Poe have stuck to this day. (Except the underage cousin thing, that part is true.)

  3. Also, Poe is credited with changing the writing world. Before, writers would typically earn no money for their work, but Poe made it a point to write and attract a paying audience. “The Raven” earned him $9 as an example. He made it possible for other writers to write as a career.

  4. One of the techniques that makes Poe’s writing more intense is called “doubling” or when characters closely mimic each other. An evocative example is in “The Fall of the House of Usher”, when the narrator reads a passage from a book and hears strange noises that correspond to the descriptions in the story.

  5. The NFL’s own Baltimore Ravens got their name from Poe’s work “The Raven.”enter image description here

  6. No one knows how he really died, as his medical records were lost. The reasons run the gamut from alcoholism to STDs to “cooping”