ing, his first engagement, and his time with his foster family. After he left home, he tried to make a life for himself in Boston. He was reunited with his brother, but at the young age of 24 he died which upset Poe very much. His writing became more insistent after being rejecting constantly by newspapers. Soon afterwards, he married his own cousin, Virginia, who was his symbol as the perfect woman. In 1837, he moved to New York, where competed with some of the best contemporary writers of that time. Just when his life and writing seemed to be becoming constant and somewhat stable, his wife died of tuberculosis, and this shattered Poe. His writing instantly became dark and dreary, but he used the death of his wife as inspiration to write of death and love and reunion. His worked continued to grow, and people began to notice it. But it was not until after his death on October 7, 1849 that his writing was given the recognition that it deserved (Hart 521-2).Throughout his short-lived life, Edgar Allan Poe compiled a collection of literature, poetry, short fiction, and literary criticism. Some people think that some of Poe’s criticism has endured more than his short fiction and poetry. Hart writes, “There have been strongly divergent evaluations of Poe’s literary significance, from Emerson’s dismissal of him as the ‘the jingle man’ and Lowell’s ‘three-fifths genus and two fifths, sheer fudge’ to Yeat’s declaration, ‘always and for all the lands a great lyric poet” (522). The criticism of his poetry and writing was a direct criticism on his theories, as he implemented his theories in all of his writing. For example, Poe believed that length was extremely important. Poe once wrote that, “If any literary work is too long to read at one sitting, we must be content to dispense with the immensely important effect derivable from unity of impression- for, i...
