As a literary artist who worshipped beauty and discovered it in the most forbidding details of human experience, Poe occupies a unique position in American letters. Absorbed as he was in the mysteries of life and love and death, he found subjects for his captivating tales and enchanting verses in the longings of a soul for self-fufillment. He lived his life in eternal shadows and lived in a world of his own.

Born in Boston of actors who died before he was three, Poe was never able to come to terms with reality and the details of his life were as horrible as his stories. He was adopted by foster parents and at seventeen he entered the university of Richmond. He was naturally moody and had no close friends, fell out with his foster parents, and plunged himself into despondency because of his hopeless attraction to a schoolmates mom. Whom he immortalized in his poem, "To Helen".

Because of gambling debts he was kicked out of the university and ran away to Boston, found a publisher for his first volume of verses, joined the army, spent a few weeks at West Point, got himself expelled, and finally decided to devote himself to writing.

Broke and depressed, Poe went to live with his Aunt in Baltimore while he borrowed money and became a better writer. At twentyfour, he married his fourteen year old cousin, Virginia Clemm, who shortly became a consumativeinvalid and died in eighteen-fortyseven, in New York, where they had gotten a home. A congenityal alcoholic, the bitter writter became the victim of morbid obsessions, which all but robbed him of his sanity.

In eighteen-thirtythree, he won fifty dollars from a Baltimore weekly for one of his stories. Subsequent assignments on literary journals created a demand for his editiorial skills, and by the time his story "The Gold Bug" and poem, "The Raven" appeared he had finally gained the recognition he so desperately coveted, his virtues were a rare faculty for logical analysis masterful employment of images and symbols, and an unparalled gift of verbal sorcery, for which he's been widely acclaimed.

In eighteen-fourtynine, in Baltimore he was found on the streets of the city in a state of delirium, he died soon after, leaving behind ten published works of great talent.