It is almost impossible to shell such a rich, extraordinary and unusual personality as the one of Edgar Allan Poe.

Considered by many as America's greatest writer nowadays, he wasn't much appreciated in his own country at a time when, abroad, he had myriads of fervent and notorious admirators, like the famous poet Baudelaire who made a remarkable translation of his works into French. Jules Verne, Stephane Mallarme and Paul Valery, were also ranking amongst his strong supporters.

Eventually, in America, his fame was founded by French-influenced writers like Ambroce Bierce or Robert W. Chambers, together with writers of the Lovecraft school.

Who would imagine that a character such as Poe would enrol himself in the U.S. Army? Surprisingly, he was a fine enlisted man and non-commissioned officer, until he entered West Point in 1830 and was dismissed one year later for intentional neglect of his duties. After he had left, he published his Poems to which 131 of the 232 cadets at the Academy subscribed.

Considered by the public as a master of cryptograms ? Cryptology was almost nonexistant in the general public during Poe's lifetime, and Poe, in a manner of sleight of hand, was actually distracting his readers from the simplicity of his methods of solution.

What does this prove in fact ? Simply, that Poe's writings were magic, and that Poe was himself a magician.

In the eyes of America's public opinion of his time, Poe's life was shrouded in controversies, scandals, and ambiguities.

Orphan of modest itinerant actors, he was adopted by John Allan, a rich merchant of Richmond and brought up partly in England.

Never legally adopted, he took Allan's name for his middle name.

(After he had been expelled from the University of Virginia for not paying his gambling debts, John Allan disowned him).

His love life was a subject of slanders, between his marriage to his 13 years old cousin Virginia Clemm - he was then 27 - and his frequent platonic romances with renowned women, such as Sarah Helen Whitman, Annie Richmond, Mrs. Ellet, and also Mrs. Shew who broke off in 1848 after friends had persuaded her that further association with Poe would be detrimental to her spiritual welfare.

Even Poe's medical health fell under scrutiny when the public speculated that his physical woes were originated by alcohol abuse and drug addiction. In 1849, in Philadelphia, he was arrested and taken to prison after heavy drinkings. Like Thoreau, he didn't stay imprisoned very long, after John Sartain, the owner of Sartain's Union Magazine, rescued him, taking him to his own house for recovery.

Controversy followed him until his death, burial, and grave: is Edgar Allan Poe buried beneath his monument at Westminster's graveyard, or beside his grandfather, General Poe ?