Edgar Allan Poe was born to poor actor parents. His father David was an average actor and a heavy drinker who deserted his son and wife and disappeared forever. His mother Elizabeth, on the other hand, was said to have been a charismatic and talented actress. Elizabeth died of tuberculosis in December of 1811. Edgar Poe was not quite three, but always remembered his mother vomiting blood and being carried away from him forever by sinister men dressed in black. It was her sudden death that was said to have warped Poe

Poe is most often thought of for his short fiction, but his first love as a writer was actually poetry. He began to write poetry during his adolescence. Poe's early verse showed the influence of English romantics, and it also gave a glimpse to his later poetry which illustrates a subjective outlook and surreal, mystic vision (Allen 224).

Virginia eventually died on January 30, 1847, and Poe broke down, though he felt relieved in a way from "the horrible never- ending oscillation between hope and despair" (Allen 309). Throughout his life, Poe lost everyone he cared about and loved. So like the hero of one of his own tales, he was constantly threatened and tortured by the pendulum of fate swinging between the extremes of the human condition (Allen 312). Poe was perfectly discernible and clear to the end, but he lost the will to detach himself from the ever present chaos that was bringing him down (Krutch 207). His works reflect the double aspect of his personality: the abandonment of the self-destructive romantic artist and the self-control of the conscious and the conscientious craftsman, the passivity of the dreamer indifferent to all that exists outside his dream world and the restless activity of a keen

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