Edgar Allan Poe

My hero, Edgar Allan Poe, is truly an inspiration because he became a great American poet even though he struggled many times over the course of his life. Here is why he is my hero: a strange world of fantasy and horror is found in the poems and stories of Edgar Allan Poe. This eerie, imaginary world was a necessary escape for Poe, for his real life was truly a miserable one.

Edgar Allan PoePublic Domain via Wikimedia Commons

He was born to poor parents in 1809, in Boston, Massachusetts, and his dad abandoned the family and his mom died before he was three. He was taken in by his godfather, John Allan, a wealthy Virginian, who gave Poe a fine education in England and America. Then a serious disagreement with his foster father separated him from his family while still in his teens. From then on poverty and illness marked Poe's short life.

By the age of twenty-one, he had published three books of poems, and in 1833 a short story won him $50 in a newspaper contest. His reputation grew, but his writing earned him little money. He lived at that time with his aunt, Maria Clemm, a poor widow, and in 1835 he married her thirteen-year-old daughter, Virginia.

He and Virginia were often ill. His misfortunes preyed upon him, and he drank heavily. Still his years were busy, not only as a writer, but as an editor and critic as well. His ingenuous poems and intriguing short stories make him an unforgettable figure in American literature.

His poem, "The Raven," was on the lips of the entire nation after it appeared in early 1845. His horror stories still send a tingle through a reader's body today, and his detective stories set a pattern which many other writers would follow. After Poe's wife died in 1847, Poe had what we now call a nervous breakdown. He died in Baltimore, Maryland, in October, 1849, just forty years old.

So that is why I love Edgar Allan Poe.