Jordan's Blog: Edgar Allan Poe

Background on Poe:

His father abandoned the family when he was a child.
Mother died of tuberculosis when Edgar Allan Poe was just the age of 2.
Was adopted by John and Frances Allan (where his name came from)
His childhood and adolescence were plagued by the deaths of those closest to him (i.e. his mother, his first love when he was 15, and his foster mother when he was 20.)
He's known as the the founder of the detective fiction genre.
He had a gambling problem and it got so bad he ended up dropping out of college when his foster father stopped giving him money and he enlisted into the army.
After the death of his foster mother, his foster father disowned him.
In 1835, Poe married his 13 year old cousin. (She was half his age, on marriage certificate it was listed as 21, not 13)
In 1849, Poe was found disorientated walking through Baltimore and was hospitalized.
He was never coherent enough to explain what had happened before he died.
His cat, Catterina died the same day as Poe, miles away.

Poe was nowhere near the drug-addled, drunken image we have of him today. His work as a writer left him little time to drink, and he once took a small dose of an opiate that made him so sick he swore it off for life.