Edgar Allan Poe’s life at times seems like a gothic melodrama, too wild to be true.
Losing several family members and the love of his life to cholera and tuberculosis, marrying his cousin, and then dying mysteriously before he could see the fruits of his labor.
The poster child of the broke, struggling artist, unappreciated in his time, his genius wasn’t unearthed until after he was gone.
While that description is not entirely accurate, he was rather well-known as an incendiary literary critic, his poem The Raven was an instant smash, he was definitely a writer who lived paycheck to paycheck, and used a lot of that paycheck to drink until it stopped hurting.
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