Peter Ackroyd's biography of Poe opens with his end, his final days - no-one knows what happened between the time when friends saw him off on the steam-boat to Baltimore and his discovery six days later dying in a tavern. Poe has been claimed as the forerunner of modern fantasy and credited with the invention of pschological dramas (long before Freud), science fiction (before H.G. Wells and Jules Verne) and the detective story (before Arthr Conan Doyle).

Peter Ackroyd's biography of Poe opens with his end, his final days - no-one knows what happened between the time when friends saw him off on the steam-boat to Baltimore and his discovery six days later dying in a tavern.

Poe Biography Complete Unabridged