In 1836 Poe married his first cousin, Virginia, and embarked on a career as a journalist. Poe worked diligently as a book reviewer and as a magazine editor in Richmond, Philadelphia and New York to make his living. Battling poverty, illness and the indiscriminate puffing of American authors, Poe became the leading literary critic of his time. All the while, he struggled against the temptation of alcohol, a common social pastime. Duels were something fought when a man refused to drink with his friends or enemies. On his own, he invented the literary genres of science fiction, the detective story and the modern horror story. Though he wrote many works of fiction, Poe considered himself a poet and described "The Raven" as the most perfectly constructed poem ever written.

Poe's life ended in Baltimore. On his way from Richmond to New York, he stopped here, visited with friends and likely became the victim of an election practice known as "cooping." On October 3, 1849, the local election brought out gangs from opposing political parties, the Whigs and the Democrats. These gangs abducted foreigners and drunkards, cooped them in cellars, drugged them with alcohol and laudanum and forced them to vote repeatedly for the same candidate until they were unable to walk. Poe's longstanding alcohol intolerance coupled with years of poverty may finally have taken the life of the author revered by literary scholars as well as those who simply enjoy a good horror story -- the master of mystery and the macabre. Edgar Allan Poe.