The day that marks Edgar Allan Poe’s 200^th anniversary is that of 19^th of January 2009. Even after all these years, the poet still has the power to impress throughout his work and sad, short life, not to mention his mysterious death which sustain his legend. His tales of gothic horror and grisly murder remain engraved on the imagination once read.

 

He became the master of the macabre while being a man who endured more sufferance during his lifetime than a single person should. His share of misery reflects in his poems that reverberate throughout popular culture to this day.

 

To mark his anniversary, a mysterious man wearing a hat visits his tomb in Baltimore every year in the early morning darkness to bring him red roses and a half-filled bottle of cognac. It is said that about 50 people waited on Monday outside the cemetery of Westminster Presbyterian Church, hoping to catch a glimpse of the elusive man known as the "Poe toaster," but somehow, the man manages to fade away from curious eyes.

 

Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston on the 19^th of January 1809 and died at 40 in Baltimore on the 7^th of October 1849 leaving behind a work of genius. Thanks to that, literature would never be the same again.

 

Just in time for the poet’s anniversary master biographer Peter Ackroyd who was born 100 years after Poe’s death, has written a brief but elaborate book, “Poe: A Life Cut Short.” Ackroyd is also attributed the full-gore biographies of long-gone literary lights such as T.S. Eliot, Charles Dickens, William Blake, and Thomas More.