Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Poe was born in Boston in 1809 and was orphaned while still a child. He was taken into the Richmond household of John and Frances Allan and spent part of his childhood in Britain, attending schools in Scotland and the London area between 1815 and 1820. He later adopted Allan as a middle name, although John Allan never formally adopted him.

Poe became known for poems and stories including The Raven, The Fall of the House of Usher and The Murders in the Rue Morgue. His work helped develop Gothic fiction, psychological horror and the modern detective story. Fiction about his English school years must reconstruct much of his childhood experience because the surviving record is limited and later literary traits cannot simply be projected onto the boy.

In Andrew Taylor’s The American Boy, Thomas Shield becomes a master at a school near London and is assigned to two boys: the sensitive Charles Frant and his American companion, Edgar Allan Poe.