Edgar Allan Poe Born in Boston, he was the second child of two actors. His father abandoned the family in 1810, and his mother died the following year. Thus orphaned, the child was taken in by John and Frances Allan, of Richmond, Virginia. Although they never formally adopted him, Poe was with them well into young adulthood. Tension developed later as John Allan and Edgar repeatedly clashed over debts, including those incurred by gambling, and the cost of secondary education for the young man. Poe attended the University of Virginia for one semester but left due to lack of money. Poe switched his focus to prose and spent the next several years working for literary journals and periodicals, becoming known for his own style of literary criticism. Poe and his works influenced literature in the United States and around the world, as well as in specialized fields, such as cosmology and cryptography. Life and career Early life The Allan family had Poe baptized in the Episcopal Church in 1812. Military career
The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe(published 1845) FOR the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. From my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of my disposition. I married early, and was happy to find in my wife a disposition not uncongenial with my own. This latter was a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree. Pluto -- this was the cat's name -- was my favorite pet and playmate. Our friendship lasted, in this manner, for several years, during which my general temperament and character -- through the instrumentality of the Fiend Intemperance -- had (I blush to confess it) experienced a radical alteration for the worse. One night, returning home, much intoxicated, from one of my haunts about town, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence. In the meantime the cat slowly recovered.
Complete text of Shkspr's Plays Literature Project - Free eBooks Online On Edgar Allan Poe by Marilynne Robinson Edgar Allan Poe was and is a turbulence, an anomaly among the major American writers of his period, an anomaly to this day. He both amazed and antagonized his contemporaries, who could not dismiss him from the first rank of writers, though many felt his work to be morally questionable and in dubious taste, and though he scourged them in print regularly in the course of producing a body of criticism that is sometimes flatly vindictive and often brilliant. It seems to have been true of Poe that no one could look at him without seeing more than they would wish or he could tolerate. The writer Thomas Wentworth Higginson said Poe had “the look of over-sensitiveness which when uncontrolled may prove more debasing than coarseness.” Poe published The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket in 1838, relatively early in his career. The word that recurs most crucially in Poe’s fictions is horror. Poe’s mind was by no means commonplace.
LibriVox The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was — but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a sojourn of some weeks. Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet really knew little of my friend. I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experiment — that of looking down within the tarn — had been to deepen the first singular impression.
Great Books Index - List of Titles An Index to Online Great Books in English Translation To obtain an index of an author's works, including any known online editions of each work, and online articles about that author, select the author's name. To obtain an index of online editions of a particular work, select the name of that work. Authors are listed here in order of their birthdates (insofar as known). The Bible -- Homer -- Aeschylus -- Sophocles -- Euripides -- Herodotus -- Thucydides -- Hippocrates -- Aristophanes -- Plato -- Aristotle -- Euclid -- Archimedes -- Apollonius -- Lucretius -- Virgil -- Tacitus -- Epictetus -- Nicomachus -- Plutarch -- Ptolemy -- Marcus Aurelius -- Galen -- Plotinus -- St Augustine -- The Quran -- St Thomas Aquinas -- Dante -- Chaucer -- Erasmus -- Machiavelli -- Copernicus -- Rabelais -- John Calvin -- Montaigne -- William Gilbert -- Cervantes -- Francis Bacon -- Galileo -- William Shakespeare -- Johannes Kepler -- William Harvey -- Thomas Hobbes -- Descartes -- John Milton -- Moliere -- Blaise Pascal -- Christiaan Huygens -- Goethe --
The Raven: Lou Reed’s Adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe, Illustrated by Italian Artist Lorenzo Mattotti by Maria Popova A graphic novel “meant to be heard in the mind.” Over the past century, illustrations and riffs on Edgar Allan Poe have ranged from Harry Clarke’s stunning 1919 illustrations to today’s parodic Amazon reviews and literary action figures. But our era’s most exquisite take on the beloved poet comes from none other than the late and great Lou Reed. In 2003, he endeavored to set Poe’s most famous stories and poems to music, unleashing his legendary composer-lyricist magic on an album that was part tribute, part remarkably inventive interpretation of Poe’s literary legacy. Alongside the record came the eponymous graphic novel The Raven (public library) — Reed’s collaboration with legendary Italian cartoonist and artist Lorenzo Mattotti, whose mesmerizing crayon pastel illustrations amplify the dark whimsy of Poe’s poetry and infuse it with the defiant eroticism of Reed’s lyrical adaptation. Here’s Reed’s rewrite of “The Raven”: Images courtesy of Galerie Martel Donating = Loving
Electronic Poetry Portal Poe: About the Man Poe: About the Man Who was Edgar Allan Poe? He was an antebellum Virginian, a journalist, a performer, an amateur scientist, and, as the son of an actress, a social outcast. "I am a Virginian." In calling himself a Virginian, Poe identified himself with the state in which he had been reared, educated, and begun his career in journalism. When the actress Eliza Poe died in Richmond in 1811, she had three young children. Poe grew up accustomed to the fine furnishings with which the Allans decorated their homes. Insurance Declaration for Moldavia. "And this maiden she lived with no other thought … Than to love and be loved by me." "To Zante". 6 November 1840. Poe's first fiancée, Elmira Royster Shelton, inspired the poem "To Zante." Elmira Shelton. Poe's first and last fiancée, Elmira Royster Shelton, is pictured here in about 1850, when she was about forty years old. Poe used realistic details to change fantasy into science fiction. The Conchologist's First Book. "Hans Phaal, A Tale.". Tales.