ute with Mr. Allan, Poe lived for a while in Baltimore with his aunt, Mrs. Maria (Poe) Clemm. She was a poor seamstress, but she welcomed Poe into her home and took care of him. In 1833 The Saturday Visitor of Baltimore announced a literary contest with prizes of fifty dollars for the best short story, and twenty-five dollars for the best poem. Poe submitted a group of stories, Tales of the Folio Club, and a poem, The Coliseum. One of the stories, MS. Found in a Bottle, won the story prize, and his poem would have won the poetry prize except that the judges decided not to award both prizes to the same contestant. The prize money was not important, but one of the judges, novelist John P. Kennedy, took an interest in Poe and befriended him by helping him sell a story to the new Southern Literary Messenger of Richmond. Poe joined the editorial staff of the magazine and soon became its editor. A number of his stories appeared in its pages. Once established in his job, he brought Mrs. Clemm and her daughter, Virginia, to live with him. A little later he married his cousin, Virginia, who was some years younger than he. From that time on, the three formed a household. He has many problems with drinking and therefore his job was on and off. Soon after moving to New York, his poem, The Raven, was published in the New York Evening Mirror. It was reprinted in a number of magazines, and at once became extremely popular. The Raven is not by any means Poe's best poem. With The Raven, Poe reached the height of his fame. Poe was the originator of the American short story. There had been other short works of fiction, but Poe perfected the short story as an art form. Conan Doyle was influenced by him, particularly in their early writing, before each had found his individual style. Poe led in his 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...
