Edgar Allan Poe was born in 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts, and died in 1849 in Baltimore. Edgar Allan Poe’s parents both died when he was a young child. He was taken in by John Allan, a merchant. John Allan never legally adopted Poe, so  Edger took  Allan as his middle name. Poe wrote many short stories and poems but not many of them sold, so he worked for some magazines where some of his work became famous. Poe married his 13-year-old cousin Virginia Clemm in 1836. Poe edited for The Broadway Journal, which failed, so then he moved into a cottage with his wife in the Bronx. Virginia died in the cottage in 1846  from a broken blood vessel. Poe was found on the streets on October 3, 1849, three years after Virginia died, he was delirious, he was taken to a hospital and died there on October 7, 1849. Poe became really famous for his short and scary stories like The Tell Tale Heart.

The Tell Tale Heart is a story we read out loud in class. It is really scary, not in the sense that it is horrifying but it is written in a way that you don’t know what is going to happen. Here is a scary sentence from The Tell Tale Heart, “ I cut off the head and the arms and the legs.” Edgar Allan Poe is also really descriptive, he has a great vocabulary of words, but since he lived a while ago some of the words are not from the present day. Here is a sentence to show you how descriptive he is, “The disease had sharpened my senses — not destroyed — not dulled them.” Poe’s Tell Tale Hart is a really scary story and if you don’t believe me then read the story yourself.