The genius of Edgar Allan PoeEdgar Allan Poe remains today one of the most singular figures in American literary history. Critics have compared him to both Leonardo da Vinci and the “Jingle Man”; either the keystone of American literature or simply a fashionable entertainment writer. As a person and a writer, Poe is also a set of contradictions. One thing is certain, few people have left a more lasting impression on the minds of readers than Poe. Later authors were never able to improve on the style created and mastered by Poe. Poe's tales have transcended generations of American readers and spanned many changes in literary thought. The man himself is one of the few things as strange and unique as Poe's writings. Poe created his unique, strange and disturbing tales by testing the limits of the soul, walking the line between higher understanding and madness. A Childhood Redeemed Edgar Allan Poe was born in 1809 in Baltimore, Maryland, to two young actors named Eliza Arnold Hopkins and David. Poe. When Poe was almost three years old, his mother died of tuberculosis. This had a profound impact on young Poe, who "always remembered, more or less unconsciously, his mother vomiting blood and being carried away forever by sinister men in black", according to Roger Asselineau, professor of American literature at the Sorbonne. , Paris. A few days later, David Poe, known to be an alcoholic, disappeared. Although he was never found, it is assumed that he fled rather than die. Fortunately, young Edgar was taken in by John and Frances Allan of Richmond, Virginia, where Poe was with his family when his mother died. John Allan was a successful business...... middle of paper ...... e" was a literary genius whose ability to tell stories of the "grotesque" and "arabesque" is still unmatched. Poe was in many ways, a slave to his gifts and often tempted by disaster It was the fine line he walked that made him the author he was, but it was ultimately a line on. which he would fall, destroying his life but making him immortal for his readers.BibliographyAsselineau, Roger Edgar Allan Poe Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1970.Chivers, Thomas H. PhD Life of Poe: EP Duton & Co., Inc. ., 1952. Ketterer, David. Allan Poe: Life, Work and Criticism Fredericton, Canada: York Press LTD, 1989. Meyers, Jeffrey Allan Poe, His Life and Legacy: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1992. Poe, Edgar A. Great Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe New York: Washington Square Press, Inc..., 1965.