Edgar Allan Poe (Boston, January 19, 1809 - Baltimore, October 7, 1849) is a poet, novelist, short story writer, literary critic, playwright and American publisher and one of the main figures of American romanticism. Best known for his tales - kind whose brevity allows him to develop his theory of the effect, according to which all elements of the text must contribute to the achievement of an effect only he gave his new letters nobility and is considered the inventor of the detective story. Many of his stories prefigure the genres of science fiction and fantasy. Born in Boston, Edgar Allan Poe loses his parents, David Poe, Jr. and Elizabeth Arnold, in his infancy; it is collected by John and Frances Allan of Richmond, Virginia, where he spent most of his younger years, except for a trip to England and Scotland, with relative ease. After a brief stint at the University of Virginia and the military career attempts, Allan Poe leaves. His literary career began humbly by the anonymous publication of a collection of poems called Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), signed only "a Bostonian". Poe moved to Baltimore, where he lives with his father's family and gives up some poetry to prose. In July 1835 he became editor-assistant at the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond, where it helps to increase subscriptions and began to develop his own style of literary criticism. The same year, twenty-six, he married his cousin Virginia Clemm, who was 14 years old. After the failure of his novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, Poe produced his first collection of stories, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in 1839. The same year he became editor of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine and in Graham's Magazine in Philadelphia. It's in Philadelphia that many of his works among the best known were published. In this city, Poe also planned the creation of his own journal, The Penn (later renamed The Stylus), who will never see the day. In February 1844 he moved to New York, where he worked at Broadway Journal, a magazine of which he eventually became the sole owner. In January 1845, Poe published The Raven, which was an immediate success. But two years later, his wife Virginia died of tuberculosis on January 30, 1847. Poe is planning to remarry, but no project will be realized. October 7, 1849, Poe died at the age of 40 in Baltimore. The cause of death could not be determined and have been variously attributed to alcohol, to drugs, cholera, rabies, a disease of the heart, at a stroke, etc. The influence of Poe was and remains important to the United States as in the whole world, not only in literature but also other artistic areas such as movies and music, or in scientific fields . Although American author, he was first recognized and defended by French authors, Baudelaire and Mallarm in mind. Contemporary criticism places him among the most remarkable writers of American literature of the nineteenth century.