Edgar Allen Poe is an interesting life to look at when studying Gothic Literature. He was born on the 19^th of January in 1809 in Boston. After being separated from his siblings due to the death of his mother at the age of 2, Edgar Poe was forced into a foster home and moved around, studying in different schools around the world until dropping out of university because of the amount of debts he had.

The rest of his life he had financial struggles never making a lot of money from his novels and short stories, yet still had a great influence on the genre horror with the first ever detective story, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, published in Graham’s Magazine in 1840’s. However his death (in my opinion) was one of the more interesting aspects of his life.

In September 1849, Poe left New York and stayed in Philadelphia for a couple days and it would seem that on his way back to New York, stepped on the wrong train to Baltimore where On October the 3^rd he was found and died in the hospital on October the 7^th. Between the 3^rd and 7^th of October Edgar Poe often fell in and out of consciousness but the cause of this was never found, which to me is a detective story in itself. Even after his dead, no one is certain of what exactly happened the days he was gone and what ultimately caused his death. Many believe that alcohol played a main role because he had previously been known to have alcoholic problems and even joined “The Sons of Temperance” as an attempt to stop these problems earlier that year. One of his friends even spoke openly about this issue as the cause of Poe’s death to warn people about the consequences of alcohol.