Edgar Allan Poe books in order

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was an American poet, short-story writer and critic, author of "The Raven" and "The Fall of the House of Usher", who is credited with helping to invent the detective story with "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841).

He was born in Boston on 19 January 1809 to the actors David and Eliza Poe. Orphaned young, he was raised in Richmond, Virginia, by John and Frances Allan, who never formally adopted him. He spent about a year at the University of Virginia, enlisted in the US Army under an assumed name and was later court-martialled out of West Point. His first book, Tamerlane and Other Poems, appeared in Boston in 1827, followed by Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems (Baltimore, 1829) and Poems (New York, 1831). He worked as an editor and critic for magazines in Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York and was one of the first Americans to try to live by writing alone.

His Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque was published by Lea and Blanchard in Philadelphia in 1840. "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" appeared in Graham's Magazine in April 1841, and "The Raven" in the New York Evening Mirror on 29 January 1845, bringing him sudden fame. His only complete novel was The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. He married his cousin Virginia Clemm in 1836; she died in 1847. Poe died in Baltimore on 7 October 1849, and the cause of his death remains unknown.

For collectors. Tamerlane and Other Poems was printed by Calvin F. S. Thomas and credited only to "a Bostonian"; perhaps 50 copies were printed and about twelve are known. A copy sold at Christie's, New York, in December 2009 for $662,500, a record for a work of American literature. Wiley and Putnam of New York published both Tales and The Raven and Other Poems in 1845.