Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), US author and poet. Poe is most famous for his stories of the macabre, and his tales of horror and mystery. One of his most famous poems is 'The Raven' (1845). His famous short stories include 'The Masque of the Red Death' (1842), 'The Fall of the House of Usher' (1839), 'The Pit and the Pendulum' (1842) and 'The Purloined Letter' (1844). Poe was also a literary critic and a writer of detective fiction. He died in Baltimore, Maryland, at the age of 40, of unknown causes. This engraving, the frontispiece for 'The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe' (1853), is after an 1845 portrait by US artist Samuel Stillman Osgood (1808-1885).