Edgar Allan Poe was born on the 19th of January, in 1809, to Actress Elizabeth Poe and Actor David Poe Jr. Edgar and his brother and sister were orphaned before his third birthday. ( poedecoder 1) His mother died when Edgar was only two, by which time his father, had disappeared. Frances Allan and her husband John Allan who was a tobacco exporter of Richmond raised him as a foster child. Poe spent his youth between the ages of six and eleven with the Allans in England attending boarding school.( NHS 1) In 1826, he entered the University of Virginia. He was a good student but he was forced to gambling since john Allan couldn't provide him enough. Poe had to leave the University after one year because Allan refused to pay his gambling debts. In 1827 Edgar published Tamerlane, his first book, an

Most of Edgar’s work with the Messenger was of a critical nature, but he also published some literary work such as Bernice. His work with the writing and the editorial departments of the Messenger increased the circulation of the magazine, but his drinking habits forced White to eventually let him go. Edgar moved around to New York and Philadelphia, trying to establish a name in literary journalism, but he had no major success. Edgar Allan Poe’s theories on musical poems and short prose narratives which were to aim at “ a certain unique or single effect” can be for example seen in Ligeia and The Fall of the House of Usher. In January 1847, Virginia died and Edgar took this very hard but he continued to write until the day he died in Baltimore on October 7, 1849.(poedecoder 2) Whether true or not, there were some controversies surrounding the time of Poe’s death. Some modern critics of Poe claim he had an intolerance to alcohol, which agitated his poor health. Some also blame Griswold, a character who attempted to defame Poe by spreading stories to give Poe a bad reputation. Whether Poe was an alcoholic or opium taker is irrelevant. Poe’s times were a different era and cannot be compared to our modern day society. Poe himself like to project a certain image and the most important fact is that his memory has lived on and his works have as well.(virtual library 2)

The Fall of the House of Usher is what we dominate a stern and somber, but at the same time, a noble and imposing picture, such as can be drawn only by a master Hand. Such things are not produced by your slip-shod amateurs in composition, some of whom, in the character of critics, perhaps, may display their utter inability to perceive in this very performance any characteristic of its real design. ( Clarke 117)

Edgar Allan Poe used many different writing styles and writing techniques as well as different genres he used in his story telling. One of the most common elements that Poe uses is fear. Fear has a certain exciting appeal to a reader who knows that he or she cannot be physically harmed by reading a blood-chilling story, and Poe is aware of this fact also. Poe takes advantage of the attraction that fear has for a reader and couples it with the act that a frightened or apprehensive reader is vulnerable to a writer’s suggestions. In effect, Poe is able to set up the reader and work his art of manipulation on him, an art which consists of dragging the reader further and further into a world of deep-seated, unconscious fears, a world that is of Poe’s own literary and artistic creation. ( Saliba 38)

Poe’s eccentric detective Dupin, who appeared also in The Mystery of Marie Roget and The Purloined Letter, is the identifiable ancestor of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, Erle Stanley Gardener’s Perry Mason and all of those other heroes whose minds are “ resilient and creative”.

One might think that Poe would be best remembered for his powerful tales, but a lot of his international reputation rests on his critical acumen which pointed in equally new directions. Poe was one of the first to discern the tendency of the afe toward “ the curt, the condensed, the pointed, the readily diffused”. In one of Poe’s famous critical pieces, he recogniz

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