His other brother William Henry Leonard Poe would also become a poet before his early death, and Poe’s sister Rosalie Poe would grow up to teach penmanship at a Richmond girls’ school. The real Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809. But much of what we know about Poe is wrong, the product of a biography written by one of his enemies in an attempt to defame the author’s name. He is seen as a morbid, mysterious figure lurking in the shadows of moonlit cemeteries or crumbling castles. Just as the bizarre characters in Poe’s stories have captured the public imagination so too has Poe himself. Poe’s reputation today rests primarily on his tales of terror as well as on his haunting lyric poetry. He is widely acknowledged as the inventor of the modern detective story and an innovator in the science fiction genre, but he made his living as America’s first great literary critic and theoretician.

This versatile writer’s oeuvre includes short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, and hundreds of essays and book reviews. His works have been in print since 1827 and include such literary classics as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, and The Fall of the House of Usher. It seems as though Poe had some idea in mind but no one is sure what it was.The name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead. The indentation of this poem was done purposely in an attempt to match the way Poe originally wrote it. To the moaning and the groaning of the bells. What a world of solemn thought their monody compels !Īt the melancholy meaning of their tone ! In the clamour and the clangour of the bells ! In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,īy the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells. In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire, What tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells ! To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells ! What a gush of euphony voluminously wells !

To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats What a world of happiness their harmony foretells ! To the tintinnabulation that so musically wellsįrom the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. What a world of merriment their melody foretells !

The bells by edgar allan poe