Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was born in 1809 in Boston, USA. His parents died when he was young, and he went to live with the Allan family in Richmond. He spent a year at university, and then two years in the army. In 1831 he moved to Baltimore, where he lived with his aunt and his cousin Virginia. For the next few years life was difficult; he wrote stories and sold them to magazines, but it brought him little money. But he did find happiness with Virginia, whom he married in 1836.

From 1838 to 1844 Poe lived in Philadelphia. Here he wrote some of his most famous stories, such as The Fall of the House of Usher and The Pit and the Pendulum. Then he moved to New York City, where his poem The Raven soon made him famous. But Virginia died in 1847, and Poe began drinking heavily. He tried to kill himself in 1848, and died the following year.

Poe is best known for his horror stories, but he also wrote poetry, funny stories, mysteries, and stories about time travel - a kind of early science fiction. He is often called the father of the modern detective story, because of his story The Murders in the Rue Morgue. It was the first story to show how the detective thinks, and because of this the Mystery Writers of America give a prize called an "Edgar" to the writer of the best mystery each year. There have been several films of this famous story. A silent film in 1914 was followed by two more films, both of which told a completely different story from the original. A film made for television in 1986 was much closer to Poe's story.