Edgar Allan Poe's Mental Health Issues, Home Life, and His Writings

How did Edgar Allan Poe's mental health issues and his home life affect his writings?
Edgar Allan Poe is thought to be one of the most controversial and famous writers. According to http://www.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/allam/17841865/lit/poe.htm and http://www.eapoe.org/papers/psbbooks/pb19871c.htm, Poe led a very tortured life, which may explain some of his writings. His father abandoned the family while he was a baby, and his mother died of TB before Edgar was three. Poe also married his COUSIN when she was only thirteen. Those things, along with his fascination of gory and Gothic themes allowed him to become a prominent writer, mastering the Gothic genre. Poe is thought to have had an unusually potent right cerebral hemisphere, which normally plays a part in visual imagery, music, emotions, reverie, and self-destructive urges. In one of his works, Rufus Griswold ruined Poe's reputation by misquoting his writings and overplaying his drinking problems. In all reality, Poe was probably just a "one beer wonder" who could not hold his alcohol. Poe's probable mental illness was manic-depressive, which greatly influenced him because of the fact that Poe wrote about dark things like death. He had an apparent fascination with the death of women, but that could be the cause of him seeing so many deaths of women close to him, like his mother and his young cousin-wife.
   (The second picture is the different cerebral hemispheres.)

Why did Washington Irving use pen-names?

What is a psuedonym? http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pseudonym defines it as a fictitious name used by an author to conceal his or her identity; pen name. This is what Washington Irving used when writing his short stories. According to http://classiclit.about.com/cs/profileswriters/p/aa_wirving.htm Washington Irving was born April 3, 1783 in New York City, and was the eleventh child to William and Sarah. His most famous works were "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." However, Irving did not use his real name as the author, which sparked my question. Why did Washington Irving use pen-names for his short stories? Irving used names like Dietrich Knickerbocker, Jonathan Oldstyle, and Geoffrey Crayon. I did not actually find a logical answer online for this, but I have some theories. I believe that he used these names in order to make the stories more interesting. I mean, who would rather read a story by Washington Irving than some random person named Dietrich Knickerbocker or Geoffrey Crayon? This way, Irving could read his own works and listen to how others reacted about the stories since they did not actually know who wrote them.
  

Frederick Douglass: The Real Story

Who was Frederick Douglass? According to http://www.who2.com/bio/frederick-douglass and http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/douglass/bio.html, Frederick Douglass was born as Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey in February 1818 in Maryland to a black slave woman and an unknown white male, who was probably his mother's slave master. When he was 20, he escaped to New York to obtain his freedom. In order to keep his freedom, he changed his name from Frederick Bailey to Frederick Douglass. He chose this name from a character in the book from The Lady of the Lake by Sir Walter Scott. This way, he was able to keep his freedom and marry a free black woman named Anna Murray in 1838. Frederick and Anna had four children between the years of 1839 and 1844. During these times, Douglass became an aid abolitionist for black suffrage and pushed to end slavery. He wrote What to the Slave is the Fourth of July on July 5, 1852 as a protest to July 4th. Douglass' wife Anna died in 1882, and two years later in 1884 he remarried, this time to his white secretary named Helen Pitts. Douglass' works were used as propaganda for the civil war in order to get African American slaves to fight against the south. Douglass died in 1895 from heart failure. This was the same year that Booker T. Washington became prominent by giving his Atlanta Exposition speech. Douglass is often referred to as one of the South's most famous examples of the region's mixed racial heritage.

Side-note: The year Douglass wrote What to the Slave is the Fourth of July, Phi Mu was founded and publicly announced. I thought that was very cool.