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Introduction
Edgar Man Poe
Edgar Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States in 1809. His parents were actors in a travelling company. They died before their child was three, and John Allan, a merchant in Richmond, Virginia, took Edgar into his house. Edgar Allan Poe (the second name was added by his new father) did not seem unusually clever at school, although we do not know much about the five years (1815-20) when he was at school in England. In 1826 he entered the University of Virginia, but he had to leave after only one year, owing a great deal of money. His debts were the result of gambling - playing cards and risking money on other games.
Poe joined the United States army in 1828. He had already written, and printed at his own expense, Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827).
John Allan helped him to go to a training college for officers. Poe did not complete his training there, but some of his fellow cadets liked his poetry so much that they paid for the printing of a collection of his poems.
Poe saw himself as a poet, but his poetry did not earn enough to live on. He became a writer of articles and stories for magazines, and later a literary critic, one who points out the good and bad sides of writers' work. It was as a critic that he became well known. His criticism was usually sharp and far-seeing. He praised the young Charles Dickens when others had not yet seen the promise