was an American poet, short story writer, editor and literary critic, and is considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Edgar Allan Poe

Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective-fiction genre.

He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction.

He was born Edgar Poe in Boston Massachusetts, on January 19, 1809, the second child of actress Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe and actor David Poe, Jr.

His father abandoned their family in 1810, and his mother died a year later from consumption. Poe was then taken into the home of John Allan, a successful Scottish merchant in Richmond, Virginia. The Allans served as a foster family but never formally adopted Poe, though they gave him the name "Edgar Allan Poe".

After spending a short period at the University of Virginia and briefly attempting a military career, Poe parted ways with the Allans. Poe's publishing career began humbly, with an anonymous collection of poems, Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), credited only to "a Bostonian".

Poe switched his focus to prose and spent the next several years working for literary journals and periodicals, becoming known for his own style of literary criticism.

In Baltimore in 1835, he married Virginia Clemm, his 13-year-old cousin. In January 1845, Poe published his poem "The Raven" to instant success. His wife died of tuberculosis two years later.

13-year old cousin, Virginia Clemm.

He began planning to produce his own journal, The Penn (later renamed The Stylus), though he died before it could be produced. On October 7, 1849, at age 40, Poe died in Baltimore; the cause of his death is unknown and has been variously attributed to alcohol, brain congestion, cholera, drugs, heart disease, rabies, suicide, tuberculosis, and other agents.

Poe's best known fiction works are Gothic, a genre he followed to appease the public taste. His most recurring themes deal with questions of death, including its physical signs, the effects of decomposition, concerns of premature burial, the reanimation of the dead, and mourning.

 Many of his works are generally considered part of the dark romanticism genre.

To communicate Ideas Poe used styles that helped him create the genre of modern Horror.

A first person point of view in which the narrator expresses emotional intensity. “I saw, too, for a few moments of delirious horror …”

Repeated or italicized words “I was sick – sick unto long death with that long agony …”

Strange or grotesque sensory images “ The foulness of the pit is conveyed in the descriptions of a clammy vapor and the peculiar smell of decayed fungus”

Unusual choice of words and expressions Long sentences or sentences with interruptions.

 “Berenice"  "The Black Cat"  "The Cask of Amontillado"  "The Fall of the House of Usher"  "The Gold-Bug"  "Hop-Frog"  "Ligeia"  "The Man of the Crowd"  " The Masque of the Red Death"  "The Murders in the Rue Morgue"  "The Pit and the Pendulum"  "The Purloined Letter"  "The Tell-Tale Heart"  "The Oblong Box"  "The Premature Burial"  "The Oval Portrait"

 " A Dream Within A Dream"  "Annabel Lee"  "The Bells"  "The City in the Sea"  "The Conqueror Worm"  "Eldorado"  "The Haunted Palace"  "Lenore"  "The Raven"  "Ulalume"

Homework: Visit the following site, poestories.com Once you’re there, click stories and look for The Mask of the Red Death. 12 th Grade

 Print out a copy  Read it  Write on a paper the characters and describe them.  Bring any materials that you have at home to make a costume based on those characters or character. Yeah!!! you heard me, a costume

 Read: The Pit and the Pendulum By: Edgar Allan Poe

 Read it ( yeah! That’s right, read it)  Bring any materials that you have at home to make a costume based on the story.