Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, editor, and literary critic. Poe is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and of American literature as a whole, and he was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story. He is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre and is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction.  

Literary Theoory: 

Poe's writing reflects his literary theories, which he presented in his criticism and also in essays such as "The Poetic Principle".He disliked didacticism  and allegory, though he believed that meaning in literature should be an undercurrent just beneath the surface. Works with obvious meanings, he wrote, cease to be art.  He believed that work of quality should be brief and focus on a specific single effect. To that end, he believed that the writer should carefully calculate every sentiment and idea. 

Poe describes his method in writing "The Raven" in the essay "The Philosophy of Composition", and he claims to have strictly followed this method. It has been questioned whether he really followed this system, however. T. S. Eliot said: "It is difficult for us to read that essay without reflecting that if Poe plotted out his poem with such calculation, he might have taken a little more pain over it: the result hardly does credit to the method." Biographer Joseph Wood Krutch described the essay as "a rather highly ingenious exercise in the art of rationalization". 

Death: 

        Poe drank himself to death.   All who knew him knew that he had a serious problem with alcohol.  He had once been jailed for public drunkenness.  According to Baltimore Poe society, he stated too much drinking habits during his wife's long illness. 

 Author Charles Bonner found an entry from the diary of one of Poe's   contemporaries that stated: 

 "Edgar A. Poe died in town here at the hospital from the effects of a debauch.   - some companion here seduced him to the bottle - [and] the consequence was fever, delirium, and madness, and in a few days a termination of his sad career in the hospital." 

 Dr. Moran, the doctor who attended Poe at his death-bed, wrote a letter to Maria Clemm that obviously presumed that Maria would already know that Poe had drank himself to death: 
wikipediya/Edgar Alan Poe