Edgar Allen Poe

            
             Edgar Allan Poe has cast a long shadow. He has probably had a greater influence than any other American writer through his short stories, tales, and poetry, and his many different techniques and genres. Although Poe's tales and poems range from masterful to ludicrous, Poe exerted his most significant influence as a man who understood the temper of his times, and foreshadowed much of the future of literature.
             Edgar Allan Poe was born on the 19th of January, in 1809, to Actress Elizabeth Poe and Actor David Poe Jr. Edgar and his brother and sister were orphaned before his third birthday. ( poedecoder 1) His mother died when Edgar was only two, by which time his father, had disappeared. Frances Allan and her husband John Allan who was a tobacco exporter of Richmond raised him as a foster child. Poe spent his youth between the ages of six and eleven with the Allans in England attending boarding school.( NHS 1) In 1826, he entered the University of Virginia. He was a good student but he was forced to gambling since john Allan couldn't provide him enough. Poe had to leave the University after one year because Allan refused to pay his gambling debts. In 1827 Edgar published Tamerlane, his first book, anonymously under the signature " A Bostonian" as well as some other poems. Later in 1827 he enlisted in the Army under the name Edgar A. Perry because he was still quarreling with John Allan. He did well in the Army but in 1829 he left and decided to apply for a cadetship at West Point. .
             Before he was able to enter West Point, Edgar published a book entitled "Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and minor poems". This time the book was not published anonymously, but under the name Edgar a. Poe, where the middle initial acknowledged John Allan's name. Before Edgar left West Point, he received financial aid from his fellow cadets to publish a third edition of the book. Edgar called this second edition " Poems by Edgar A.