Edgar Allan Poe

Orphaned before he was three when his actress mother died of tuberculosis, Poe was taken in, but never formally adopted, by the Richmond merchant John Allan, whose refusal to fund his education or gambling debts drove a permanent rift between them. Poe left the University of Virginia and West Point in disgrace before turning to magazine work.

He married his first cousin Virginia Clemm, who was thirteen when they wed, and worked for years as a caustic, feared literary critic and editor at magazines including the Southern Literary Messenger and Graham's, never earning enough to escape poverty. 'The Raven,' published in 1845, made him famous overnight but paid him almost nothing; Virginia died of tuberculosis two years later.

Poe himself died in Baltimore in 1849 at forty, found delirious and incoherently dressed days before his death, the cause never conclusively established.