Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, grew up in Richmond, Virginia, and in his many restless moves, lived in half a dozen Eastern cities. His true home was always in the "misty mid region of Weir" of his own fertile and troubled imagination. His father was David Poe, a Baltimore actor. His actress mother, Elizabeth, born of English parents, had come to the United States as a child. The two were not notably talented; …showed first 75 words of 2386 total…

…showed last 75 words of 2386 total…methods of analysis in his detective stories. No one has outdone him in creating an atmosphere of morbid horror in such tales as The Pit and the Pendulum and The Tell-Tale Heart. The best of his poetry is pure magic. There is no better summary of his life and work than the quotation from Francis Bacon, inscribed over the Poe Gate at West Point: "There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportions."