The
United States Constitution is the supreme
law of the
United States of America. It was adopted on
September 17, 1787, by the
Constitutional Convention in
Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, and later
ratified by conventions in each
state in the name of "the People"; it has since been
amended seventeen times, besides the 10 added through the
Bill of Rights . The Constitution has a central place in
United States law and
political culture. The handwritten, or "engrossed",
original document is on display at the
National Archives and Records Administration in
Washington, D.C. The United States Constitution has 4,543 words, including the signatures.
Several of the ideas in the Constitution were new, and a large number of ideas were drawn from the literature of Republicanism in the United States, from the experiences of the 13 states, and from the British experience with mixed government. The most important influence from the European continent was from Montesquieu, who emphasized the need to have balanced forces pushing against each other to prevent tyranny.
Edgar Allan Poe (
January 19, 1809 –
October 7, 1849) was an
American poet,
short-story writer,
editor and
literary critic, and is considered part of the American
Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of
mystery and the
macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the
detective-fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of
science fiction. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.
Poe's publishing career began humbly, with an anonymous collection of poems, Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), credited only to "a Bostonian". Poe switched his focus to prose and spent the next several years working for literary journals and periodicals, becoming known for his own style of literary criticism. His work forced him to move between several cities, including Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and New York City. In Baltimore in 1835, he married Virginia Clemm, his 13-year-old cousin. In January 1845, Poe published his poem "The Raven" to instant success. His wife died of tuberculosis two years later. He began planning to produce his own journal, The Penn (later renamed The Stylus), though he died before it could be produced. On October 7, 1849, at age 40, Poe died in Baltimore; the cause of his death is unknown and has been attributed to alcohol, brain congestion, cholera, drugs, heart disease, rabies, suicide, tuberculosis, and other agents.
Poe and his works influenced literature in the United States and around the world, as well as in specialized fields, such as cosmology and cryptography. Poe and his work appear throughout popular culture in literature, music, films, and television. A number of his homes are dedicated museums today.
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