Poe Stuff Page

 We would like you to give you a little intro and practice on creating your own digital movie.  This will be a "quick and dirty" lesson where we will provide you with graphics, information and sound

Using MovieMaker for PCs (those who have ibooks at home can apply the same lesson to an iMovie), we would like you to make a short digital biography about Edgar Allan Poe. 

1. It is important that you be at the same computer every day.
2. To copy these pictures, just click on them to open the thumbnail and then click with your right mouse button to save target. 
3. To make things easier to find, create a Poe folder on your drive or on the C:drive.  Create a folder with your last name an underscore and the word poe.  For example, grimaldi_poe

• Images
• Information
• Sounds

Images

New York house	Annabelle lee	Annabelle lee 2	Bedroom where wife died	Bells
From Cask	From Cask	From Cask	Cask mask party	Black cat
haunted soul	undead	House of Usher	House of Usher	House of Usher
Fanny Allan	Maria Clemm	John Allan	Poe's mom	Virginia
Virginia drawing	osgood	Poe	Poe	Poe
Poe	Poe grave	Poe's obit	demented Poe	Poe with sig
Poe Cottage	Poe house	Poe shire	Poe window	Raven
Raven at Poe house	Raven illustration	eerie statute	Hospital Poe died	Poe's childhood home
a grave	living dead grave	grave back	Poe cartoon	Fear
Poe Poem	Poe's grave	Fear	Fear	death
tell tale heart eye	tell tale heart	Tell tale heart	Tell tale heart	Red Death
undead	undead	Red Death	Spooky	Scream

Music and Sounds

• Arabesque
• Fugue10
• Heartbeat
• Impromptu
• Adam's Family
• Pachebels cannon
• Purcell_Rondeau (recorder)
• Thunder (SF)
• Tocatta (ram)
• Tocatta (mp3)

Information

Poe's Background

Poe was the son of traveling actors, David Poe Jr. and Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins. His father abandoned the family in 1810, and his mother died of tuberculosis.  Orphaned at the early age of two and taken in by John and Frances Allan, a wealthy couple from Richmond Virginia lead a quiet childhood. However as a moody adolescent, Poe quarreled with John Allan, who scorned his literary ambitions and wanted him to join the family business.  He left the university of Virginia without graduating and was expelled from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1831. 

He then moved in with his aunt and cousin Virginia, whom he wed in 1836, when she was just 13 years old.  Poe and Virginia lived a good life until Virginia died of tuberculosis at the age of 25. Tormented throughout his life by painful loss, bitterness, and depression, Poe found escape in writing stories and poems that portrayed haunted lives even darker than his own.

Poe's Death

On October 3, 1849 Poe was found on the streets of Baltimore, delirious and "in great distress, and... in need of immediate assistance," according to the man who found him. He was taken to the Washington College Hospital, where he died early on the morning of October 7. Poe was never coherent long enough to explain how he came to be in his terrible condition, and, oddly, was wearing clothes that were not his own.

The precise cause of Poe's death is disputed. Dr. J. E. Snodgrass, an acquaintance of Poe who was among those who saw him in his last days, was convinced that Poe's death was a result of alcoholism, and did a great deal to popularize this interpretation of the events. He was, however, a supporter of the temperance movement who found Poe a useful example in his work; later scholars have shown that his account of Poe's death distorts facts to support his theory.

Dr. John Moran, the physician who attended Poe, stated in his own 1885 account that "Edgar Allan Poe did not die under the effect of any intoxicant, nor was the smell of liquor upon his breath or person." This was, however, only one of several sometimes contradictory accounts of Poe's last days he published over the years, so his testimony cannot be considered entirely reliable.

Numerous other theories have been proposed over the years, including several forms of rare brain disease, diabetes, various types of enzyme deficiency, syphilis, the idea that Poe was shanghaied, drugged, and used as a pawn in a ballot-box-stuffing scam during the election that was held on the day he was found, and, more recently, rabies. T

he rabies death theory was proposed by Dr. R. Michael Benitez, and is based upon the fact that Poe's symptoms before death are similar to those displayed in a classic case of rabies. Cats play a prominent part in many of his stories. It is conjectured that he was accidentally bitten by a rabid pet.

In the absence of contemporary documentation (all surviving accounts are either incomplete or published years after the event; even Poe's death certificate, if one was ever made out, has been lost), it is likely that the cause of Poe's death will never be known.

Poe Women

All of the important women in Edgar Allan Poe's life died at an early age from tuberculosis. Tuberculosis is a disease that hits the lungs and causes the affected person have a persistent cough, night sweats, fever, chills, and exhaustion.  It is usually a long and consuming illness. Poe's mother, Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins died of tuberculosis when Poe was only two. 

Poe's adopted mother also died of tuberculosis in 1829.

Virginia Clemm and Edgar Allan Poe, who were first cousins, were married in 1836, when Virginia was 13. They were by all accounts a happy and devoted couple. But in 1842, Virginia Poe developed tuberculosis. Her health declined and she became an invalid, which drove Edgar Allan Poe into a deep depression. In a letter to a friend, Edgar Allan Poe described his resulting mental state: "I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity."

Edgar Allan Poe's love for Virginia Poe, and the effect that her suffering and dying had upon him, are reflected in his tragic poem Annabel Lee  and indeed perhaps in the decline of his mental state in his last years.