Edgar Allan Poe & Alcoholism

Poe was brought up partly in England, and then attended the University of Virginia in 1826, where he was a good student, both academically and athletically, but was expelled for not paying his gambling debts (Martin). He gambled because John Allan did not give him enough money to maintain his position as a student. He had drunk and gambled away $2000 in debts. John was upset about his dismissal, and early next year, Edgar went off on his own, with no money even for food and John would not send him any. Edgar went back to Boston and published his first work, Tamerland and Other Poems, but it got him little attention and money (Martin). He then joined the army, until his 'Ma' passed away in Boston and he quit, and he moved in with his Aunt Clemm, who had a daughter, Virginia. While there he wrote At Aaraaf, Tamerland, and Minor Poems. This got him some attention and he joined West Point Academy in New York. However, he had the same problems at West Point as at the University of Virginia, and was court martialed. In 1831 and relea

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nother cat and takes it home and likes it at first, but then his irrational moods from drinking make him think the cat is a reincarnation of the one he killed, and he begins to hate it (Poe). One night he takes an axe to kill it, and his when his wife tries to stop him, he kills her with the axe, then seals her up in a chimney in the basement. The police come to his house a few days later to look around and he begins proudly boasting about how solidly the walls are built, which makes them suspicious and they find the wife's body, with the cat sitting on her head, smiling. Poe's perversity in stories such as this could well have been brought on by his drinking. "These tales of ratiocination owe most of their popularity to being something in a new key," Poe explained in an interview in 1846 (Rachman). He was referring to the stories he wrote in the early 1840s featuring C. Auguste Dupin - The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841), The Mystery of Marie Roget (1842-43), and The Purloined Letter (1841). The new key was what has now become detective fiction. Poe went on, "I do not mean to say that they are not ingenious, but people think them more ingenious than they areûon account of their method and their air of method." On the
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Approximate Word count = 1413
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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