Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe (born January 19, 1809 – died October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic who is best known for his poetry and short stories, considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre as well as a significant contributor to the emerging genre of science fiction. He is widely regarded as a central figure of American literature and Romanticism in the United States.

Poe married his 13-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm, at the age of 27. His letter proposing to Virginia was sent two weeks after her 13th birthday, suggesting that he fell in love even earlier. Poe’s proposal letter is almost desperate with passion for his cousin; he writes:

I cannot express in words the fervent devotion I feel towards my dear little cousin — my own darling.

He asks for her consent and promises to respect it either way:

Ask Virginia. Leave it to her. Let me have, under her own hand, a letter, bidding me good bye — forever — and I may die — my heart will break — but I will say no more.

Poe secretly married Virginia on September 22, 1835. She was 13 at the time, though she is listed on the marriage certificate as being 21. On May 16, 1836, when Virginia was 14, the couple had a second wedding ceremony in Richmond, this time in public. One evening in January 1842, Virginia showed the first signs of consumption, now known as tuberculosis, while singing and playing the piano. Poe described it as breaking a blood vessel in her throat. She only partially recovered, growing worse for five years until she died of the disease at the age of 24 in the family's cottage, at that time outside New York City.

By all accounts, Virginia was equally devoted to her husband. Her only surviving composition is a love poem she wrote for Edward in 1846.

Virginia's death had a significant effect on Poe. After her death, Poe was miserable for several months. A friend said of him, "the loss of his wife was a sad blow to him. He did not seem to care, after she was gone, whether he lived an hour, a day, a week or a year; she was his all." A year after her death, he wrote to a friend that he had experienced the greatest evil a man can suffer when, he said, "a wife, whom I loved as no man ever loved before", had fallen ill.

Poe regularly visited Virginia's grave. As his friend Charles Chauncey Burr wrote, "Many times, after the death of his beloved wife, was he found at the dead hour of a winter night, sitting beside her tomb almost frozen in the snow".

Further Reading

Quinn A.H. (1941). Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. D. Appleton-Century Company.