Edgar Allan Poe is a very well known writer today. He was born in 1809, on January 19 in Boston Massachusetts.  His parent’s names were Elizabeth and David Poe. He also had a brother and sister. When Edgar was six, he went to England to go to a school which he finished when he was eleven. Early in his life, Edgar Allan Poe was orphaned when his dad abandoned his family and  his mother died.  Later, he joined the army, but to do so, he had to lie about his age. When Mr. Poe was 26, he married one of his cousins who was 13 years old.  His wife was named Virginia Clemm, to allow  Edgar to marry her, they had to say that she was 21 years old.  Edgar Allan Poe wrote many stories and poems, but the thing he was mostly known for in his lifetime was being a critic for writing.  At age forty, right before his death, someone found him outside, delirious and was taken to the doctor.  Edgar later died on October 7Th, 1849, of a cause that is still unknown today.  some of Edgar Allan Poe’s work are the Raven and the Tell Tale Heart.

Edgar Allan Poe is known as the father of horror stories.One horror story that he wrote is called the Tell Tale Heart. It is about a servant who kills his master and then keeps thinking that he was hearing his master’s heart beating when it was really his own.There are several things that make it a horror story, and which also makes Edgar Allan Poe the father of horror stories.  First, he used a lot of description, especially in the eleventh paragraph, even though there’s lots of it in the other paragraphs too.  The description makes the story more scary and it helps people picture the scary parts better.  Also he often repeats words which emphasises them and increases the scariness.  For example, this is the first half of the eleventh paragraph:
“But even yet I refrained and kept still. I scarcely breathed. I held the lantern motionless. I tried how steadily I could maintain the ray upon the eye. Meantime the hellish tattoo of the heart increased. It grew quicker and quicker, and louder and louder every instant. The old man’s terror must have been extreme! It grew louder, I say, louder every moment! –do you mark me well? I have told you that I am nervous: so I am. And now at the dead hour of the night, amid the dreadful silence of that old house, so strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror. Yet, for some minutes longer I refrained and stood still. But the beating grew louder, louder! I thought the heart must burst. And now a new anxiety seized me –the sound would be heard by a neighbor! The old man’s hour had come! With a loud yell, I threw open the lantern and leaped into the room.”
The last thing I would like you to know about Edgar Allan Poe as a horror writer, is that he used very good vocabulary.  For example, when he said that the strange noise was very scary, he used the words: “uncontrollable terror”. Those are the reasons why Edgar Allan Poe was the father of horror stories, which made him a very successful writer.

Edgar Allan Poe was a very successful writer for a number of reasons.  One reason that I think that he was a successful writer is that his stories were unique at that time, so everyone wanted to read them.  Also, he wrote lots of different pieces, so some of them ended up getting published.  I think that he chose very good titles for his stories and poems.  One of his stories that he had a particularly well chosen title is The Tell Tale Heart. I think that the title is a good one because it is very mysterious and unique.  It is mysterious because it makes you start wondering what the heart has to do with anything.  I am not sure what gave him the idea for the plot in the story, but I have some guesses.  One guess is that he once heard his own heart beating loudly and thought it was someone else’s.  My other guess is that someone once told him a story where a servant murdered his master.  Even though that I usually don’t read horror stories, because the plot is well chosen and the title good, I would like to read more of his writing pieces.  I think that the one comment that I would like to make about Edgar Allan Poe’s stories is that they all have the same theme -horror stories.  I just wish that he had written other kinds of stories too.  Also, I think that it is interesting that the story of his death isn’t average.  For one thing, no one knows why he died.  Also after he died, he was placed at first under a grave with no markings, but later it was given a headstone.

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By chriswatkins