Edgar Allan Poe is one of America's greatest and most well-known authors and poets. His poems and short stories mostly included tales of mystery and macabre. He was one of the earliest writers of detective fiction. Poe was also credited for his contributions to the emerging genre of science fiction. Edgar Allan Poe was born on 19 January 1809, in Massachusetts, Boston. With an absentee father and a mother who passed away when Poe was only three, he grew up never really knowing his parents. Instead, he was raised by a tobacco merchant and his wife, who gave him the middle name ' Allan' while ' Poe' was the family name of his biological parents. By the age of 13, Poe had become a prolific poet, publishing his first book in 1827. He served in the military for a few years but returned to full-time writing, which was his true passion. He was the first popular American writer to earn a living through writing alone, which also made him struggle financially. He spent a lot of his life in debt even though most of his works went on to become literary classics. His gambling addictions only added to his woes. Apart from writing stories, Poe was also a well-known critic of contemporary classics. His contemptuous critiques earned him the nickname the ' Tomahawk Man' .