Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe was the wife of American writer Edgar Allan Poe. The couple were first cousins and publicly married when Virginia Clemm was 13 and Poe was 27. In 1842, she contracted tuberculosis, growing worse for five years until she died of the disease at the age of 24 in the family’s cottage. Poe was involved in a substantial scandal involving Frances Sargent Osgood and Elizabeth F. Ellet a few years after their wedding.
About Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe in brief
Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe was the wife of American writer Edgar Allan Poe. The couple were first cousins and publicly married when Virginia Clemm was 13 and Poe was 27. In January 1842, she contracted tuberculosis, growing worse for five years until she died of the disease at the age of 24 in the family’s cottage. Poe was involved in a substantial scandal involving Frances Sargent Osgood and Elizabeth F. Ellet a few years after their wedding. Rumors about amorous improprieties on her husband’s part affected Virginia Poe so much that on her deathbed she claimed that Ellet had murdered her. Her struggles with illness and death are believed to have affected his poetry and prose, where dying young women appear as a frequent motif, as in \”Annabel Lee\”, \”The Raven\”, and \”Ligeia\”. Only one image of Virginia ElizaClemm Poe has been authenticated: a watercolor portrait painted several hours after her death. The disease and eventual death of his wife had a substantial effect on Poe, who became despondent and turned to alcohol to cope. Poe left the destitute family behind and moved to Richmond, Virginia to take a job at the Southern Literary Messenger. He was soon smitten by a neighbor named Mary Devereaux. The young Virginia served as a messenger between the two, at one point retrieving a lock of devereaux’s hair to give to Poe. In August 1835, Edgar wrote an emotional letter to Maria Clemm, his cousin, declaring that he was blind and pleading with her to allow him to make her own decision.
Virginia and Henry offered to provide financially for Maria, Virginia and Poe to move to Richmond. Their plans were confirmed on May 16, 1836, though accounts are unclear as to when the couple might have been married as well, though Accounts are unclear, though Virginia was only 16 at the time of their marriage. Poe’s older brother William Henry Leonard Poe had recently died on August 1, 1831. He left very little to the family and relatives offered no financial support because they had opposed the marriage. Maria supported the family by sewing and taking in boarders, aided with an annual USD 240 pension granted to her mother Elizabeth Cairnes, who was paralyzed and bedridden. In 1832, the family – made up of Elizabeth, Maria, and Virginia’s brother Henry – was able to use Elizabeth’s pension to rent a home at what was then 3 North Amity Street in Baltimore. The family lived together off and on for several years before their marriage in 1835. Poe joined the household in 1833 and was soonsmitten by an unnamed woman. He later married Maria Poe, Maria’s first cousin, on July 12, 1817, after the death of her first wife, Harriet, and went on to have three more with Maria. After his death in 1826, he left verylittle to the Family. After Maria’s husband died in 1831, he had five children from his previous marriage.
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This page is based on the article Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 08, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
