Happy Birthday EDGAR ALLAN POE

Edgar Allan Poe was born 216 years ago today. We commemorate the poet who was only 40 years old.

Did you know?
– Poe is best known for his horror stories, but he is also considered one of the earliest writers of short stories, the inventor of the modern detective story and a pioneer of the science fiction genre.
– Edgar Allan Poe is considered America’s first known professional writer (and coined the image of the “starving artist”).
– He was probably named by his parents, who were both actors, after a character in Shakespeare’s “King Lear” (the son of the Earl of Gloucester), as they performed it in the year of his birth.
– Before Edgar was four years old, his parents died and he was taken in by a wealthy merchant named John Allan and his wife Francis. – But later disinherited.
– His death was mysterious and remains so to this day. One newspaper gave the cause of death as “brain congestion”, which is perhaps a euphemism for alcohol poisoning. A death certificate has not been preserved.