Brief Biography of Edgar Allan Poe:
Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American poet, short story writer, editor, critic and one of the leaders of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of the macabre, Poe was one of the early American practitioners of the short story and a progenitor of detective fiction and crime fiction. He is also credited with contributing to narrative forms of the emergent science fiction genre. Poe died at the age of 40. The cause of his death is undetermined and has been attributed to alcohol, drugs, cholera, rabies, and other agents.
Poe’s literary reputation was greater abroad than in the United States, perhaps as a result of America’s general revulsion towards the macabre. However, American authors as diverse as Walt Whitman, H. P. Lovecraft, William Faulkner, and Herman Melville were influenced by Poe’s works. Many others, however, were sharp critics, including T. S. Eliot and Mark Twain.
