ling and his addiction to alcohol (Silverman 29-38).The greatest contributor to Poe's despair would have to be his self-inflicted addiction to alcohol. His foster family's social status made his alcoholism a shameful vice, and a source of conflict. Using it as an escape of sorts, Poe's life was greatly affected by the substance, disrupting his work, his first engagement, and his time with his foster family. After he left his family, he tried to make a life in Boston, where he found his relatives poor, but giving. Reunited with his brother, William, Poe found him dying at the haunting age of 24. His writing became more insistent, as he found himself rejected by several newspapers. He eventually married his cousin, Virginia, who became a symbol to him as the ideal woman. In 1837, he moved to New York, where he engaged in literary wars with his contemporaries. Highly opinionated, Poe was not timid about criticizing the great poets and writers of his time. Poe continued to pursue his writing, and in 1947, Virginia died of tuberculosis, which left him understandably broken. However, upon her death, Poe still used her as his muse, finding the inspiration to write of death and love and reunion. He died on October 7, 1849 (Hart 521-2).Throughout his short-lived life, Edgar Allan Poe compiled a collection of literature, offering poetry, short fiction and literary criticism. In fact, perhaps even more than his poetry and short fiction, Poe's criticism is what has endured, and has recently come into its own. In his Brassfield 3 day, Poe was always trying to find his place among the literati. Hart writes, "There have been strongly divergent evaluations of Poe's literary significance, from Emerson's dismissal of him as 'the jingle man' and Lowell's 'three-fifths genius and two fifths sheer fudge' to Yeat's declaration, 'always and for all lands a great lyric poet'" (522). The criticism of his poetry and writing was a d...
