BIOGRAPHY

On January 19, 1809, Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Mssachusetts. Poe's father and mother were professional actors, who were members of a repertory company in Boston. Before Poe was three years old both of his parents died.

John and Frances Allan raised him as a foster child in Richmond, Virginia. John Allan sent Poe to the best boarding schools and later to the University of Virginia, where Poe excelled academically. After Allan refused to pay the  gambling debts of Poe.

His financial problems ere temporarily alleviated when he accepted and editorship and the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond. Bringing with him his aunt and his twelve-year-old cousin Virginia, whom he married in 1836. She died in 1847, his death at age 24, would mean Poe's psychological collapse, which resulted in some of his best and darkest works while being abandoned to alcohol and drugs. On October 3, 1849, he was found in a state of semi-consciousness. Poe died four days later of “acute congestion of the brain.” Evidence by medical practitioners who reopened the case has shown that Poe may have been suffering from rabies.