Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849)

Master of the macabre, he wrote short story masterpieces of supernatural horror like "The Fall of the House of Usher" and haunting poetry, most famously "The Raven". He married his thirteen-year old cousin and after her death at twenty-four, went down hill fast. His life was as tortured as his fiction. A gambler, a boozer, an opium user, he was found dead on a Baltimore street at the age of forty. There were four mourners at his funeral.