"You must be mad to enjoy this, am I?"

Nugget about the author:

What else can be said about Edgar Allan Poe? (Other than the fact that finding him smiling in a picture would be creepy as hell!) So instead of the usual short bio, here are a few strange things about the Godfather of Gothic.

• He intentionally got himself court- martialed to get out of West Point Military Academy.
• In his overlooked sci-fi writings, he proposed the Big Bang Theory about 80 years before it was called the Big Bang Theory.
• It is said that he invented the word "tintinnabulation". A word describing the sound emitted by the ringing of bells.
• He is credited to be the first writer to use the term "short story", and to popularize the detective genre. Poe is also known as America's first-ever successful writer, that is, the first to make a living from just writing prose and poetry. (for those days, it still means he struggled financially and personally)
• He got a license to marry his 13 year old cousin, Virginia Clemm. Apparently this was something they did back in the day, that is, get a license to marry... and marry underaged cousins. She died about 11 years later of tuberculosis. Her death, it is said, affected much of his darker work. As did his alcoholism.
• The night before his death, he was found to be wearing another person's clothes and shouting the name "Reynolds! Reynolds! Reynolds!" No one knows to whom he was referring to.
• No one knows for sure how (or if) he died that night. All medical records have disappeared.
• Poe's Death Certificate too had been lost. To be found, never more.

Look for more Edgar Allan Poe wherever great books are found.