Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19, 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts. Poe's father and mother, both professional actors, died before the poet was three. John Allan, a prosperous tobacco exporter, and Frances Allan raised him as a foster child in Richmond, Virginia. Poe excelled academically at the University of Virginia. Poe was forced to leave the University when Allan refused to pay his gambling debts.

In 1827 his first collection of poems, Tamerlane, and Other Poems, were published.

Returning briefly to Richmond in 1849 he then set out for an editing job in Philadelphia. For unknown reasons, he stopped in Baltimore. On October 3, 1849, he was found in a state of semi-consciousness. Poe died four days later of "acute congestion of the brain."

Today, Poe is remembered as one of the first American writers to become a major figure in world literature.