Poe's life has been difficult to determine fact from legend about. Some legends were spread by Poe himself while others were spread after his death by his literary executor who tried to rewrite Poe's correspondence. Poe was born in 1809 in Boston and was orphaned at a young age, taken in by John Allan, a merchant in Richmond. Poe struggled in his studies, running up debts from gambling and drinking, and was expelled from West Point before beginning his career publishing poetry in 1831. In the last years of his life, Poe was seriously ill, perhaps with a brain lesion, and drinking steadily. He was found unconscious in 1849 and died a few days later of "congestion of the