Today we we're hosting an early celebration of the birth of legendary writer and poet Edgar Allan Poe, born January 19, 1809. He is well-known, largely thanks to his immortal poem "The Raven" and other horrifying works of short fiction like "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Fall of the House of Usher." But Poe was more than just a horror author.

Poe dabbled in a variety of literary styles and genres during his short career. His "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym" and "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" both draw inspiration from the science of his day and could be considered early works of science fiction. He is also considered the father of the detective story. "The Murder in the Rue Morgue," one of three mystery tales Poe wrote featuring fictional investigator C. Auguste Dupin, would go on to shape the genre.

He didn’t limit his work to fiction or poetry, either. Poe was a well-respected critic of literature and theater, as well as an editor and journalist. He also had a mind for science and philosophy, musing about cosmology and the origins of the universe. Poe’s incredible output was as much a product of his need for income as it was his intellect and love of writing.

Poverty was Poe’s constant companion. He didn’t earn terribly much money from his work. He was one of the first American authors to try to make a living by writing alone, and even "The Raven," the poem that would assure his immortality, brought him a grand total of $24 (the equivalent of about $800 today) after he sold it to two newspapers.

"The Raven" did indeed bring Poe a degree of immortality, but as Jennie Yabroff points out in Deranged and In Demand: Edgar Allan Poe’s Life Story, it came with a price:

In the poem, the raven is a pest, and in real life, Poe’s "Raven" has proved something of a nuisance as well, obscuring the writer’s other accomplishments. While we all know at least a few lines of the rhyming ditty, how many of us can name Poe’s other works? Those who can are usually able to name them all; the rest of us may draw a blank. This is a shame, because the writer’s greatest influence was not as a poet (the merits of “The Raven” remain open to debate) but as the arguable creator of detective fiction, an early adopter of science fiction, and one of the first practitioners of the short story.

Poe’s death is one of literature’s greatest mysteries, one that would perhaps have even stumped his great detective, C. August Dupin. On October 3, 1849, an election day, the author was discovered lying in the streets of Baltimore near a polling station. He was delirious, filthy and dressed in ill-fitting clothing that was not his own. He was taken to Washington College Hospital where he died four days later. He never became coherent enough to explain what had happened, and all of the medical records pertaining to the case have since been lost.

Speculation regarding the cause of Poe’s death continues to this day. Some think the author was poisoned, a victim of foul play. Some venture he may have died of rabies. Others simply chalk his death up as a consequence of his lifestyle: Poe was a notorious drug addict and alcoholic. Or was he?

Despite what generations of readers have been taught, this may not actually be true. Contemporary scholars believe that Poe’s reputation as an addict is probably the result of gossip spread by rivals after his death.

Poe was a harsh literary critic, and made no small amount of enemies during his lifetime. One of his most bitter enemies was Rufus Wilmot Griswold, a fellow writer and editor. After Poe’s death, Griswolt published an anonymous biography of the man characterizing him as a degenerate and drug addict. Poe’s friends protested the biography, but it proved only too popular among a public more interested in salacious gossip than the truth about a misunderstood artist.

Drinking or drugs may have played a role in Poe’s death, but not in the way that Griswold might have wanted us to believe. Poe may have been a victim of "Cooping," a practice in which thugs employed by a political candidate would kidnap people on election day, dress them in a series of disguises and make them vote several times for their employer. Victims who resisted were drugged and beaten.

If this was Poe’s fate, then it would certainly explain the odd clothes, his disorientation and why he was discovered near a polling station. This is just one theory among many, and given the lengths to which Poe’s detractors went to befoul his reputation, it may be a long time before the public is willing to abandon the darkly romantic notion that Poe was a victim of his own vices.

As Yabroff said, the time has come for a new biography of Poe. One that seeks to redress the crimes of his detractors, strike away the sensationalistic ideas that some of us hold regarding his life and bring into being the balanced and accurate portrait that the artist deserves.