Why did Edgar Allan Poe write such sad poetry?
Basically everyone Poe loved died or they were tragically lost to him. By the age of 3 his parents had died and he was made an orphan. He was taken in by the Allens but never formally adopted. He was adored by Mrs. Allen but Mr. Allen never took to him. By the time he was in college Mrs. Allen died and Mr. Allen disinherited him. An older woman, Jane Stith Stanard, on whom it seems he had a crush when he was a young man, (He wrote to Helen for her) went mad and died soon after he wrote the poem. Before leaving for the University of Virginia he was secretly engaged to a young lady named Elmira. When her family learned of the engagement she was sent away and taken from him. Years later, impoverished and barely surviving after a disasterous attempt to live a military life he ended up living with an aunt, Mrs. Clemm. When he was 26 and she was 13 Poe secretly married his first cousin Virginia. He was devoted to her until her death from tuberculosis. During the later stages of her illness i
