Caricature of Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)

“Art is the reproduction of what the senses perceive in nature through the veil of the soul.”

Orphaned as a child and disowned by his foster father while a young man, Poe’s life was ruled by bad luck and bad behavior. Drinking and gambling got him dismissed from the University of Virginia, and he was courtmartialed at West Point for failing to attend either church or his duties. He married his cousin when she was only 13, and buried her, a victim of tuberculosis, at the age of 24.

Though as editor he built Graham's Magazine into the most popular periodical of its day, he was fired from almost every job he had, and his independent ventures were all financial failures. He won numerous prizes for both his poetry and short stories but spent most of his life broke, died penniless, and was buried without a tombstone.

Through it all he kept writing. His verse was the pinnacle of Gothic pop, and his fiction was remarkably original and varied—he wrote horror, science fiction, adventure, and the first modern detective story, The Murders in the Rue Morgue. H.P. Lovecraft, a master of the modern horror story, said, “Poe’s weird tales are alive in a manner that few can ever hope to be.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe