Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston in 1809. Orphaned at the age of three, he was raised by John Allan, a prosperous merchant. Poe published his first volume of poetry while still a teenager. He worked as an editor for magazines in Philadelphia, Richmond and New York, and was a respected literary critic. In 1836 he married his thirteen-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm. It was only with the publication of his poem 'The Raven' in 1845 that Poe achieved national fame as a writer. He died suddenly and mysteriously in 1849, aged forty.
