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Edgar Allen Poe (1809-49) shifted the boundaries of fiction in the genres of detective stories, science fiction, and tales of horror. Death-especially fear of it-is a recurring theme in Poe's work. This fascination may result from Poe's own losses: his parents died before he was 3 years old. Poe married his 13 year old cousin, Virginia, in 1836; she died at the age of 24.
Poe wrote The Masque of the Red Death while Virginia was sick with tuberculosis. Perhaps the blood she coughed up inspired Poe's fictional plague-the red death was "so fatal... so hideous... the madness and...