Edgar Allan Poe was illiterate.
Edgar Allan Poe . He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and American literature as a whole , and he was one of the country 's earliest practitioners of the short story . 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 . In January 1845 , Poe published his poem `` The Raven '' to instant success . Literary criticism ( or literary studies ) is the study , evaluation , and interpretation of literature .