In “Poe’s Final Days,” author Kenneth Silverman details the death of Edgar Allen Poe, the talented but tortured writer and poet. Since Poe’s death, many have speculated on the mysterious death and its cause; the most common opinion and the one that holds the most credibility is that Poe died of alcoholism. Overwhelming evidence supports this claim; for one, Poe had been known to be an alcoholic. He had been a strong drinker, although he had promised loved ones many times that he would quit. Another example to illustrate this point was when Joseph Snodgrass, a friend of Poe’s, found him on the day of his death in a well-known Baltimore tavern and described him as wearing strange clothes and “a look of ‘vacant stupidity’” (Silverman 4). Once
