Born: August 22, 1822 - Baltimore, Maryland
Died: January 30, 1847 (age 24) - Fordham, Bronx, New York
Spouse: Edgar Allan Poe


Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe (born Virginia Eliza Clemm) was the wife of Edgar Allan Poe. The couple were first cousins and married when Virginia Clemm was 13 and Poe was 27. Some biographers have suggested that the couple's relationship was more like that between brother and sister than like husband and wife and that they never consummated their marriage. Beginning in January 1842, she struggled with tuberculosis for several years. She died of the disease in January 1847 at the age of 24 in the family's cottage outside New York City.

Along with other family members, Virginia Clemm and Edgar Allan Poe lived together off and on for several years before their marriage. The couple often moved to accommodate Poe's employment, living intermittently in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. A few years after their wedding, Poe was involved in a substantial scandal involving Frances Sargent Osgood and Elizabeth F. Ellet. Rumors about alleged amorous improprieties on her husband's part affected Virginia Poe so much that on her deathbed she claimed that Ellet had murdered her. After her death, her body was eventually placed under the same memorial marker as her husband in Westminster Hall and Burying Ground in Baltimore, Maryland. Only one image of Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe has been authenticated: a watercolor portrait painted after her death.

The disease and eventual death of his wife had a substantial impact on Edgar Allan Poe, who became despondent and turned to drink to cope. Her struggle with illness and death are believed to have impacted his poetry and prose, where dying young women appear as a frequent motif, as in "Annabel Lee".

Virginia showed her love for Poe in an acrostic poem she composed when she was 23, dated February 14, 1846:

Ever with thee I wish to roam -
Dearest my life is thine.
Give me a cottage for my home
And a rich old cypress vine,
Removed from the world with its sin and care
And the tattling of many tongues.
Love alone shall guide us when we are there -
Love shall heal my weakened lungs;
And Oh, the tranquil hours we'll spend,
Never wishing that others may see!
Perfect ease we'll enjoy, without thinking to lend
Ourselves to the world and its glee -
Ever peaceful and blissful we'll be.

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