Another post-Gothic writer who needs no introduction...
... or so I used to think, but every time I teach a Poe tale I hear students talk about what a drug-addled drunken psychopath he was. And since none of that is true, ol' Edgar does need an introduction. Or at least a disclaimer: no, Poe was not a drug addict, nor was he a drunk, although there's some evidence he had a problem with alcohol: not that he regularly over-indulged, but rather a medical condition, quite possibly some kind of enzyme disorder, which made even small amounts of alcohol highly problematic for him. He was known to drink on occasion, and sometimes to excess, very often when drinking was exactly the wrong thing to do; some scholars have speculated that Poe would deliberately (or at least "subconsciously deliberately") get drunk at high-stress moments in his life precisely in order to cause a plan or project to fail, such as the time he showed up drunk at the house of a woman with whom he was on the verge of marriage, conveniently ending the engagement. Not that Poe didn't want to marry her so much as he was unable to marry her, if what many scholars say about Poe and women is true.
