One of my favorite writer: Edgar Allan Poe

Today, while I was cleaning our bookshelves, I found this old edition of a book of Edgar Allan Poe. We have the same book in different editions too because Poe is one of our favorite authors and here in Italy we study his short stories at school too. 

I remember when I read one of his stories for the first time, I was about 11-12 years old and I loved so much that story (It was the short story "The spectacles").

Edagar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was an American poet and writers, an important character of romanticism best known for his gothic mystery/horror tales,  but it's also considered the inventor of the detective fiction and many other writers was inspired by his work.

Edgar was the second son (he had also a younger sister) of a couple of actors, but when he was a child his father abandoned his family and after few time his mother died. After those sad facts, he lived with another family (John and Frances Allan), that helped the Poe children in their life. They went in Britain for some year and so  Edgar studied in the british school before come back to Richmond with the family. In time he had some tensions with John about some debts and  Edgar couldn't finish the university due the lack of money, so he decided to enlist in Army to earn some money using an assumed name . During that period he published his poems for the first time (even if in a anonymous way).

Poe was the first American writer who tried to live just with the earnings of his written works, but it was not simple.

In time he focused his attention to prose and in the 1838 he published  The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, one of his most famous book and, in the 1845, he published "The raven", the poem that gave him success.

After the death of his wife, Poe started to drink more heavily  and to have unstable behaviour and he died in the 1849, when he was just 40 years old (the cause of his death is unknown). 

I love many of his poems and his tales, but in the last 2 years I especially loved  "The Fall of the House of Usher" because I "use" it to have some thoughts for my series of artwork about the theme "home". 

In this story there is an element that had focused my attention for the work I was doing in art: how the disintegrating house simbolize the disintegrating of the human body and mind. Poe had the extraordinary ability to create something that deeply shake your soul reading his works and I think it's a great ability for a writer.

In the following pic you can see one of my artwork inspired by the theme "house":

See ya soon

Silvia