Assignment 7- Margaret Cashman

What would you do if you found a delirious man in gutter? Leave him? Now, what would you do if you found a famous delirious man in a gutter? I bet you wouldn't leave him now would you. This is precisely how Edgar Allen Poe was found on October 3 in 1849, delirious in the streets of Baltimore, Maryland. No one is quite sure how Poe landed himself in such a situation, but these events did lead to his death four days later. October 7, 1849, marked the death of one of the greatest authors of all time. However, there is great mystery obscuring his death, seeing as Poe never became coherent enough to explain how he came to be in the gutter. On this date, America lost one of its most distinct poets, one whose work influenced the detective/mystery genre of literature. Without Poe, American authors might not have ever broken into the European literary culture. Even though Poe's death was a loss to America, his works still live on, forever doomed to a life of over analysis in high school English classes.