Edgar Allan Poe

-Biography-

SPEAKING

Click on the pic and let’s break the ice!

PRE-VIDEO ACTIVITY
1. Read the following sentences on the right, try to guess the meaning and match them with their
definitions on the left.
a. to control or make use of something 1. I enrolled for the modern art course. Next week
in order to have its power (especially a I’m starting my classes.
natural resource or energy source)
2. I have a few criticism to make about your
b. a place where alcoholic drinks and speech.
sometimes food are served, typically in
a casual setting 3. The party was too bizarre for me! There was so
many people with such weird costumes that mine
c. to officially register or sign up for a
was quite ordinary.
course, program, or membership

d. an important discovery or 4. Traces of drugs were found in his blood.

development that leads to significant
5. The firm is very big on harnessing the energy
progress or success
and enthusiasm of youth.
e. very strange or unusual, often in a
way that is unsettling or hard to explain 6. The house has belonged to her family for four
generations.
f. to be someone’s property
7. We thought the punishment was rather harsh
g. the act of expressing disapproval or
for such a minor offence.
negative comments about something or
someone 8. The tavern was packed with about 120 drinkers.
h. unpleasantly rough or severe in
9. After all that hard work, you deserve a holiday.
manner or effect

i. a small amount or indication of 10. Scientists are hoping for a breakthrough in the
something, often used when referring search for a cure for cancer.
to evidence or clues

j. to be worthy of something, usually as

a result of one's actions or qualities
 Edgar Allan Poe
-Biography-

PRE-VIDEO ACTIVITY
1. Read the following definitions, do you know any of them? Match them to their definitions.

a. to control or make use of something, usually in order to

have its power (especially a natural resource or energy 1. trace
source)

b. a place where alcoholic drinks and sometimes food are 2. harsh

served, typically in a casual setting

c. to officially register or sign up for a course, program, or

3. belong to somenone
membership
4. deserve
d. an important discovery or development that leads to
significant progress or success
5. breakthrough
e. very strange or unusual, often in a way that is unsettling or
hard to explain 6. criticism
f. to be the property of; (extra definition: to be a member or
part of a particular group or community 7. bizarre
g. the act of expressing disapproval or negative comments
about something or someone 8. tavern

h. unpleasantly rough or severe in manner or effect

9. harness
i. a small amount (or indication) of something
10. enroll
j. to be worthy of something, usually as a result of one's
actions or qualities

1. Click on the picture below or scan the QR and watch the video about Edgar Allan Poe’s bio.

VIDEO TIME
 Edgar Allan Poe
-Biography-

POST VIDEO ACTIVITY

2. After watching the video, complete the text with the words from the box.

deserves foster passed 7 gambled tavern,

detective withdraw press criticism 19 13 harsh
breakthrough settling 40 detectable enrolled belong
1836 bizarre opium 20 harness creepy dabbled

Edgar Allan Poe was a master of the macabre. He wrote horror. He wrote poetry,
________(1), fiction, mystery. He was a master of suspense.

Edgar Allan Poe, called by many the father of the ________(2) story, was born on
January ________(3), 1809, in Boston, Massachusetts. When Poe is two years old,
his mother ________(4) away, and his father had already abandoned the family. He
was taken in as a ________(5) child by the Allan family.

He was writing poetry from about the time that he was _______(6). He kept writing
all the time. He worked very, very hard in his writing and wrote constantly.

In 1826, Poe _________(7) at the University of Virginia. He went into debt. He

_________(8) to try to pay off those debts and found himself in even greater debt
and ultimately had to _________(9) from the university. In 1830, Poe enrolled at
West Point.

After West Point, Poe turned to writing full-time and lived in a number of East Coast
cities before ________(10) down in Richmond, Virginia. Edgar Allan Poe secretly
married his 13-year-old cousin and then in ________(11) publicly married her in a
more open ceremony. He loved her very, very much. They lived together always until,
alas, she died of tuberculosis when she was, I guess, around ________(12).

Poe's primary occupation as a writer was as a literary critic. He worked at several

newspapers and literary magazines and he had quite a reputation for being a
________(13) critic. One of his editors called him the Tomahawk Man. During his
lifetime, he barely made a living from his writing.
 Edgar Allan Poe
-Biography-

Poe published some of his most famous short stories in his 1840 collection, Tales of the
Grotesque and Arabesque. He wrote some of his stories using the first person and talking
about the use of ________(14). So people assumed that he ________(15) in drugs.
The stories were so _________(16). They were ghost stories taken to such a brilliant
extreme that people thought he had to be a little strange himself.

Poe invented detective fiction when he wrote The Murders in the Rue Morgue in 1841.
Murders in the Rue Morgue really _________(17) to be called the first detective story.
It started the whole tradition of detective fiction. The Raven, which was published in 1845,
was his huge _________(18). It became a big bestseller. Poe's career very much went
up and down until he really hit The Raven. And that poem was known by, you know, it
seems everyone in the world. It had an enormous __________(19).

On October _________(20), 1849, Edgar Allan Poe died at the age of _______(21)
under mysterious circumstances. Poe's death may be one of the most _______(22)
things about his life. He left Virginia on his way to New York, disappeared. A week later,
he was found on the streets of Baltimore. We don't have a single piece of information
about what he was doing. At the end of that week, he was found in a ________(23), ill,
drunk, and was taken to a hospital. It turned out he was wearing clothes that didn't
_________(24) to him. And a couple of days later, he died in a delirium. Nobody knows
exactly what killed him.

Edgar Allan Poe's legacy in American literature is very ________(25) in all of the
mystery dramas and stories we have and all the kind of horror and vampire work that we
see, that there is that trace of the sort of horror and mystery that Poe really was able to
_________(26) in his writing. Poe is an American icon. I think he's more than a writer.
Even today, more than 150 years after he died, he's still the man that everybody loves
Edgar Allan Poe.