Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, January 19, 1809, and died in Baltimore, October 7, 1849. His father, David Poe, while a law student in Baltimore, married Elizabeth Arnold, a beautiful English actress, and went on the stage himself. Several years later both died within a few weeks of each other, leaving three children, of whom Edgar was the second. Impressed by the boy's extraordinary beauty and intelligence, John Allan, a wealthy merchant of Richmond, adopted him.
Poe was then sent to England to be educated. There he spent five or six years in a school at Stoke Newington. Subsequently he was sent to the University of Virginia and to the United States Military Academy at West Point, but remained only a few months at each institution. Finally he quarreled with Mr. Allan, who died shortly afterward; and Edgar was not mentioned in the will.
In 1833 the Baltimore Saturday Visitor offered two prizes of a hundred dollars each for a story and a poem. Poe won both. This led to his employment in various editorial capacities in Richmond and New York. Quarrels with his employers usually resulted in his dismissal. During this period he was distinguished by an extraordinary degree of literary activity, however, and it was not long before he was recognized as one of the most forceful figures in American literature.
Scores of authors have found inspiration in the pages of Edgar Allan Poe. Sardou, the celebrated French dramatist, founded the main incident of his "Scrap of Paper" on Poe's "The Purloined Letter," and Conan Doyle has admitted that Dupin, the detective who appears in several of Poe's tales, was the prototype of Sherlock Holmes. "A Descent Into the Maelström" is generally regarded as one of the most representative of his stories.
We had now reached the summit of the loftiest crag. For some minutes the old man seemed too much exhausted to speak.
"Not long ago," said he at length, "and I could have guided you on this route as well as the youngest of my sons; but about three years past there happened to me an event such as never happened before to mortal man—or at least such as no man ever survived to tell of—and the six hours of deadly terror which I then endured have broken me up body and soul.
"You suppose me a very old man, but I am not. It took less than a single day to change these hairs from a jetty black to white, to weaken my limbs, and to un-string my nerves so that I tremble at the least exertion and am frightened at a shadow. Do you know I can scarcely look over this little cliff without getting giddy?"
The "little cliff," upon whose edge he had so carelessly thrown himself to rest that the weightier portion of his body hung over it, while he was only kept from falling by the tenure of his elbow on its extreme and slippery edge—this "little cliff" arose, a sheer unobstructed precipice of black shining rock, some fifteen or sixteen hundred feet from the world of crags beneath us.
Nothing would have tempted me to within half a dozen yards of its brink. In truth, so deeply was I excited by the perilous position of my companion that I fell at full length upon the ground, clung to the shrubs around me, and dared not even glance upward at the sky—while I struggled in vain to divest myself of the idea that the very foundations of the mountain were in danger from the fury of the winds.
It was long before I could reason myself into sufficient courage to sit up and look out into the distance.