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Happy Birthday Edgar Allan Poe

Born on January 19th in 1809, Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most recognised and revered names in gothic literature. Part of the American Romantic movement, Poe is best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre. Not only an author and a poet, he was also a literary critic and editor, and one of the earliest practitioners of the short story. Now widely regarded as inventing detective fiction, Poe was also a popular crime and horror author, his influence spreads far and wide, and amongst the writers who owe a tremendous dept to his work are Herman Melville, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Charles Dickens, Walt Whitman, HP Lovecraft and Jules Verne, to name but a few.

A true visionary, Poe was one of the first well-known American writers to attempt to irk out a living through writing alone, leading him down a path of financial instability and uncertainty. His gruesome stories reflected his inner turmoil. Haunted by the death of his mother, Poe wrestled with fears of abandonment throughout his life. A morbid and melancholy romantic, Poe declared in his essay, The Philosophy of Composition, “The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.” 

He died penniless, jobless, loveless and destitute on October 7, 1849, but his dark tales of madness, murder and doomed love continue to influence writers, artists and filmmakers to this day. Countless titles have been adapted for cinema throughout the years, some more loosely than others. My own particular favourites are those adapted by Roger Corman and starring Vincent Price. While they took massive liberties with Poe’s feverish narratives, they perfectly captured the doomful atmosphere of decay which permeates Poe’s best work. The ‘Poe Cycle’ included titles such as Pit and the Pendulum, Masque of the Red Death, Tomb of Ligeia, The Premature Burial and The Fall of the House of Usher.

Quoth the raven, 'Nevermore.'
  
Happy Birthday Mr Poe, thank you for dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream.

Alone

'All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.'
From childhood's hour I have not been 
As others were; I have not seen 
As others saw; I could not bring 
My passions from a common spring. 
From the same source I have not taken 
My sorrow; I could not awaken 
My heart to joy at the same tone; 
And all I loved, I loved alone. 
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn 
Of a most stormy life- was drawn 
From every depth of good and ill 
The mystery which binds me still: 
From the torrent, or the fountain, 
From the red cliff of the mountain, 
From the sun that round me rolled 
In its autumn tint of gold, 
From the lightning in the sky 
As it passed me flying by, 
From the thunder and the storm, 
And the cloud that took the form 
(When the rest of Heaven was blue) 
Of a demon in my view. 

Edgar Allan Poe
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