Born Edgar Poe

January 19, 1809

Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Died October 7, 1849 (aged 40)
Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.
Nationality American
Spouse(s) Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe

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Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American
author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American
Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre,
Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is
considered the inventor of the detective-fiction genre. He is further credited
with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first
well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone,
resulting in a financially difficult life and career.

He was born as Edgar Poe in Boston, Massachusetts; he was orphaned young

when his mother died shortly after his father abandoned the family. Poe was
taken in by John and Frances Allan, of Richmond, Virginia, but they never
formally adopted him. He attended the University of Virginia for one
semester but left due to lack of money. After enlisting in the Army and later
failing as an officer's cadet at West Point, Poe parted ways with the Allans.
His publishing career began humbly, with an anonymous collection of poems,
Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), credited only to "a Bostonian".

Poe switched his focus to prose and spent the next several years working for
literary journals and periodicals, becoming known for his own style of literary
criticism. His work forced him to move between several cities, including
Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City. In Baltimore in 1835, he married
Virginia Clemm, his 13-year-old cousin. In January 1845 Poe published his
poem "The Raven" to instant success. His wife died of tuberculosis two years
after its publication. He began planning to produce his own journal, The Penn
(later renamed The Stylus), though he died before it could be produced. On
October 7, 1849, at age 40, Poe died in Baltimore; the cause of his death is
unknown and has been variously attributed to alcohol, brain congestion,
cholera, drugs, heart disease, rabies, suicide, tuberculosis, and other agents.

Poe and his works influenced literature in the United States and around the
world, as well as in specialized fields, such as cosmology and cryptography.
Poe and his work appear throughout popular culture in literature, music,
films, and television. A number of his homes are dedicated museums today.

Poe's best known fiction works are Gothic, a genre he followed to appease
the public taste. His most recurring themes deal with questions of death,
including its physical signs, the effects of decomposition, concerns of
premature burial, the reanimation of the dead, and mourning. Many of his
works are generally considered part of the dark romanticism genre, a literary
reaction to transcendentalism, which Poe strongly disliked. He referred to
followers of the movement as "Frogpondians" after the pond on Boston
Common. and ridiculed their writings as "metaphor-run", lapsing into
"obscurity for obscurity's sake" or "mysticism for mysticism's sake." Poe once
wrote in a letter to Thomas Holley Chivers that he did not dislike
Transcendentalists, "only the pretenders and sophists among them."

Beyond horror, Poe also wrote satires, humor tales, and hoaxes. For comic
effect, he used irony and ludicrous extravagance, often in an attempt to
liberate the reader from cultural conformity. In fact, "Metzengerstein", the
first story that Poe is known to have published, and his first foray into horror,
was originally intended as a burlesque satirizing the popular genre. Poe also
reinvented science fiction, responding in his writing to emerging technologies
such as hot air balloons in "The Balloon-Hoax".

Poe wrote much of his work using themes specifically catered for mass
market tastes. To that end, his fiction often included elements of popular
pseudosciences such as phrenology and physiognomy.

Poe's writing reflects his literary theories, which he presented in his criticism
and also in essays such as "The Poetic Principle". He disliked didacticism and
allegory, though he believed that meaning in literature should be an
undercurrent just beneath the surface. Works with obvious meanings, he
wrote, cease to be art. He believed that quality work should be brief and
focus on a specific single effect. To that end, he believed that the writer
should carefully calculate every sentiment and idea. In "The Philosophy of
Composition", an essay in which Poe describes his method in writing "The
Raven", he claims to have strictly followed this method. It has been
questioned, however, if he really followed this system. T. S. Eliot said: "It is
difficult for us to read that essay without reflecting that if Poe plotted out his
poem with such calculation, he might have taken a little more pains over it:
the result hardly does credit to the method." Biographer Joseph Wood Krutch
described the essay as "a rather highly ingenious exercise in the art of
rationalization".

The Bells
I II
Hear the sledges with the bells -
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody
foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically
wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells -
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.
What a world of happiness their harmony
foretells!
Hear the mellow wedding bells -
Golden bells!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight!
From the molten-golden notes,
And all in tune,
What a liquid ditty floats
To the turtle-dove that listens, while she
gloats
On the moon!
Oh, from out the sounding cells
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
How it swells!
How it dwells
On the Future! -how it tells
Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells -
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!
III
Hear the loud alarum bells -
Brazen bells!
What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency
tells!
In the startled ear of night
How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak,
They can only shriek, shriek,
Out of tune,
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the
fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and
frantic fire,
Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,
And a resolute endeavor
Now -now to sit or never,
By the side of the pale-faced moon.
Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
What a tale their terror tells
Of despair!
How they clang, and clash, and roar!
What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air!
Yet the ear it fully knows,
By the twanging
And the clanging,
How the danger ebbs and flows;
Yet the ear distinctly tells,
In the jangling
And the wrangling,
How the danger sinks and swells,
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of
the bells -
Of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells -
In the clamor and the clangor of the bells!
IV
Hear the tolling of the bells -
Iron bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody
compels!
In the silence of the night,
How we shiver with affright
At the melancholy menace of their tone!
For every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats
Is a groan.
And the people -ah, the people -
They that dwell up in the steeple,
All alone,
And who tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling
On the human heart a stone -
They are neither man nor woman -
They are neither brute nor human -
They are Ghouls:
And their king it is who tolls;
And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
Rolls
A paean from the bells!
And his merry bosom swells
With the paean of the bells!
And he dances, and he yells;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the paean of the bells,
Of the bells -
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the throbbing of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells -
To the sobbing of the bells;
Keeping time, time, time,
As he knells, knells, knells,
In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells -
To the tolling of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells -
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

"The Bells" is a heavily onomatopoeic poem by Edgar Allan Poe which was
not published until after his death in 1849. It is perhaps best known for the
diacopic repetition of the word "bells." The poem has four parts to it; each
part becomes darker and darker as the poem progresses from "the jingling
and the tinkling" of the bells in part 1 to the "moaning and the groaning" of
the bells in part 4.

Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens

November 30, 1835
Florida, Missouri, U.S.
Died April 21, 1910 (aged 74)
Redding, Connecticut, U.S.
Pen name Mark Twain
Occupation Writer, lecturer
Nationality American
Genres Fiction, historical fiction, children's literature, non-
fiction, travel literature, satire, essay, philosophical
literature, social commentary, literary criticism
Notable work(s) Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Spouse(s) Olivia Langdon Clemens (m. 1870–1904)
Children Langdon, Susy, Clara, Jean
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Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), better
known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist.
He is most noted for his novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), and
its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), the latter often called "The
Great American Novel."

Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, which would later provide the setting
for Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. He apprenticed with a printer. He also
worked as a typesetter and contributed articles to his older brother Orion's
newspaper. After toiling as a printer in various cities, he became a master
riverboat pilot on the Mississippi River, before heading west to join Orion. He
was a failure at gold mining, so he next turned to journalism. While a
reporter, he wrote a humorous story, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of
Calaveras County, which became very popular and brought nationwide
attention. His travelogues were also well-received. Twain had found his
calling.

He achieved great success as a writer and public speaker. His wit and satire
earned praise from critics and peers, and he was a friend to presidents,
artists, industrialists, and European royalty.

However, he lacked financial acumen. Though he made a great deal of money

from his writings and lectures, he squandered it on various ventures, in
particular the Paige Compositor, and was forced to declare bankruptcy. With
the help of Henry Huttleston Rogers, however, he eventually overcame his
financial troubles. Twain worked hard to ensure that all of his creditors were
paid in full, even though his bankruptcy had relieved him of the legal
responsibility.

Born during a visit by Halley's Comet, he died on its return. He was lauded as
the "greatest American humorist of his age," and William Faulkner called
Twain "the father of American literature."

THE WOUNDED SOLDIER.

In the course of a certain battle a soldier whose leg had been shot off
appealed to another soldier who was hurrying by to carry him to the rear,
informing him at the same time of the loss which he had sustained;
whereupon the generous son of Mars, shouldering the unfortunate,
proceeded to carry out his desire. The bullets and cannon-balls were flying in
all directions, and presently one of the latter took the wounded man's head
off--without, however, his deliverer being aware of it. In no-long time he was
hailed by an officer, who said:

"Where are you going with that carcass?"

"To the rear, sir--he's lost his leg!"

"His leg, forsooth?" responded the astonished officer; "you mean his head,
you booby."

Whereupon the soldier dispossessed himself of his burden, and stood looking
down upon it in great perplexity. At length he said:

"It is true, sir, just as you have said." Then after a pause he added, "But he
TOLD me IT WAS HIS LEG! ! ! ! !"

Here the narrator bursts into explosion after explosion of thunderous horse-
laughter, repeating that nub from time to time through his gaspings and
shriekings and suffocatings.

It takes only a minute and a half to tell that in its comic-story form; and isn't
worth the telling, after all. Put into the humorous-story form it takes ten
minutes, and is about the funniest thing I have ever listened to--as James
Whitcomb Riley tells it.

He tells it in the character of a dull-witted old farmer who has just heard it for
the first time, thinks it is unspeakably funny, and is trying to repeat it to a
neighbor. But he can't remember it; so he gets all mixed up and wanders
helplessly round and round, putting in tedious details that don't belong in the
tale and only retard it; taking them out conscientiously and putting in others
that are just as useless; making minor mistakes now and then and stopping
to correct them and explain how he came to make them; remembering
things which he forgot to put in in their proper place and going back to put
them in there; stopping his narrative a good while in order to try to recall the
name of the soldier that was hurt, and finally remembering that the soldier's
name was not mentioned, and remarking placidly that the name is of no real
importance, anyway--better, of course, if one knew it, but not essential, after
all-- and so on, and so on, and so on.

The teller is innocent and happy and pleased with himself, and has to stop
every little while to hold himself in and keep from laughing outright; and
does hold in, but his body quakes in a jelly-like way with interior chuckles;
and at the end of the ten minutes the audience have laughed until they are
exhausted, and the tears are running down their faces.
The simplicity and innocence and sincerity and unconsciousness of the old
farmer are perfectly simulated, and the result is a performance which is
thoroughly charming and delicious. This is art and fine and beautiful, and only
a master can compass it; but a machine could tell the other story.

To string incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and

sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they are
absurdities, is the basis of the American art, if my position is correct. Another
feature is the slurring of the point. A third is the dropping of a studied remark
apparently without knowing it, as if one were thinking aloud. The fourth and
last is the pause.

Artemus Ward dealt in numbers three and four a good deal. He would begin
to tell with great animation something which he seemed to think was
wonderful; then lose confidence, and after an apparently absent-minded
pause add an incongruous remark in a soliloquizing way; and that was the
remark intended to explode the mine--and it did.

For instance, he would say eagerly, excitedly, "I once knew a man in New
Zealand who hadn't a tooth in his head"--here his animation would die out; a
silent, reflective pause would follow, then he would say dreamily, and as if to
himself, "and yet that man could beat a drum better than any man I ever
saw."

The pause is an exceedingly important feature in any kind of story, and a

frequently recurring feature, too. It is a dainty thing, and delicate, and also
uncertain and treacherous; for it must be exactly the right length--no more
and no less--or it fails of its purpose and makes trouble. If the pause is too
short the impressive point is passed, and [and if too long] the audience have
had time to divine that a surprise is intended--and then you can't surprise
them, of course.

On the platform I used to tell a negro ghost story that had a pause in front of
the snapper on the end, and that pause was the most important thing in the
whole story. If I got it the right length precisely, I could spring the finishing
ejaculation with effect enough to make some impressible girl deliver a
startled little yelp and jump out of her seat --and that was what I was after.
This story was called "The Golden Arm," and was told in this fashion. You can
practise with it yourself--and mind you look out for the pause and get it right.