Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston in 1809 to traveling actors who died before he was three. He was taken in, though never formally adopted, by John Allan, a Richmond merchant who gave him his middle name and an education but not stability or love. Poe attended the University of Virginia briefly, left owing gambling debts, joined the army, attended West Point and was expelled, and began the literary career that would consume and impoverish him. He worked as a critic and editor, writing reviews so savage they earned him enemies, and stories and poems that earned him little money but growing fame. 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' invented the detective story; C. Auguste Dupin solved crimes through pure ratiocination while the police stumbled in darkness.