Edgar Allan Poe

## Some attributes

### First

Edgar Allen Poe was born January 19,1809 in Boston, Massachusetts and died on October 7, 1849 in Baltimore, Maryland

### Second

Personal Life: Poe didn't know his parents very well. His father left him at an early age while his mother died of tuberculosis when he was three years old. Since his brother, William, and his sister, Rosalie, did not live with him, Poe was sent to Richmond, Virginia to live with a tobacco merchant, John Allan, along with his wife, Frances Valentine Allan. He became engrossed in poetry by the age of 13, despite his father's and headmaster's disapproval. On May 27, 1827, Poe enlisted as a private in the U.S. Army. He earned the position of Sergeant Major of Artillery, but wanted to be discharged early. His commander agreed as long as he successfully reconciled with John Allen, who cut off ties with him due to his debts from gambling. Poe later joined the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, but again wanted to leave and intentionally got court-martialed.

Poe married his cousin, Virginia Clemm Poe, whom he was deeply in love with and used as inspiration for his works. She died of tuberculosis at the age of 24, and thus caused him to become depressed and financially unstable.

### Third

Works: Poe is best known for his dark and mysterious poems and short stories such as, "The Raven," the "TellTale Heart," and "The Fall of the House of Usher." His style of writing was Gothic and usually incorporated death, mourning, or love in a dramatic way.

## Other attributes

### Fourth

Legacy: After he died, Poe' works were used to influence other pieces of literature while also helping advance cryptography and cosmology. His style was also used in television shows, movies, music, and art. Despite dying as a broke drunk, his works earned him much respect and recognition years later.

### Fifth

Contribution: It is not surprising that Poe designed Level 4 by incorporating a sense of mystery and disaster when creating the sunken ships along with its drowned sailors. Of course by being a writer himself, he also helped design Level 6 by using the typewriter as a way for the player to search for the real book in real life and find the missing words to fill in the blank.

### Sixth

Citations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar\_Allan\_Poe

It took me forever to finish that pesky level 2! I figured I might as well elaborate on the mastermind behind it.

**Nickname:** Father of the Detective Story

**Family Life:** Poe had a rocky family situation from an early age. His father left the family when he was very young and his mother died of tuberculosis soon after. He was sent to live with tobacco merchants John and Frances Allan for the rest of his childhood.

Even when he was young he had a talent in writing. However, the Allan family did not approve of his poetry - they wanted him to oversee the tobacco business. Despite this, he eventually found his footing in the writing world.

**Career:** Though he wrote for his entire life, Poe first began publishing poems and stories in the 1830s. The first collection of poems he published was called Tamerlane, and Other Poems. From there he furthered his writing career by working as a journalist. Instead of traditional reporting, he wrote stories, poems, and critiques of other literary works.

He is best known for his poem “The Raven,” which was published in the Evening Mirror. Works like “The Raven” and “The Tell-tale Heart” established him as a masterful writer who created the mystery genre.

**Contributions to the Tessera:** It’s no wonder some of those puzzles are so difficult to complete when the father of the detective story created many of them. He spent an especially long time picking the trickiest spots to hide those pipes on level 2.

Too bad not even the mystery master himself can uncover what S truly is.

**Secret Tessera Fact:** Not everyone knows the many theories about how Edgar Allan Poe died. Here are a few all in one place.