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Edgar Allan Poe: Americas
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Edgar Allan Poe belonged to the first, struggling generation of professional writers in America. Ralph Waldo Emerson had his private wealth, Nathaniel Hawthorne had his job at the Customs House, and Louisa May Alcott had her best seller, but these were rare comforts. In any case, they were not for one as dramatic, driven and self-doomed as Poe.
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Unquestionably one of America's major writers, Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was far ahead of his time in his vision of a special area of human experience - the "inner world" of dream, hallucination, and imagination. He wrote fiction, poetry, and criticism and was a magazine editor.
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Poe was given an education, both abroad in England and through private tutors in America by the Allans. The Allans moved with Poe to England in 1815, returning to America in 1820. This period makes Poe “unique among the great American writers of his generation,” for most other writers had spent little or none of their childhood in England. The influence of his time in England can be felt in many of his writings (Quinn, 65).
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Poe had an influence on cryptography beyond increasing public interest in his lifetime. William Friedman, America's foremost cryptologist, was heavily influenced by Poe.[117] Friedman's initial interest in cryptography came from reading "The Gold-Bug" as a child — interest he later put to use in deciphering Japan's PURPLE code during World War II.[118]
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As an editor Poe struggled to raise American literature to the level of his own formidable intelligence and talent. His instability doomed this ambition to failure, but his own artistry somehow survived his impulse for self-destruction. Poe added the concept of professionalism to the role of the writer in America. For him language and its artful use was virtually an end in itself, transcending ideology.
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