Annabel Lee

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The poem "Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allan Poe is an example of Gothic Romanticism in that it combines elements of horror and romance. The narrator of the poem, who fell in love with Annabel Lee when they were young, has a love for her so strong that even angels are envious. It is for that reason that the narrator believes the angels caused her death. Even so, their love is strong enough that it extends beyond the grave and the narrator believes their two souls are still entwined. Every night, he dreams of Annabel Lee and sees the brightness of her eyes in the stars. Every night he lies down by her side in her tomb by the sea.

It's thought that the poem was written in remembrance of Poe's wife Virginia, who died of tuberculosis two years before its publication. Edgar Allan Poe married Virginia Clemm in Richmond, Virginia on May 16th, 1836. The marriage was unconventional in that they were first cousins, he was twice her age and she was only 13 years old when he married her.

Virginia Eliza Clemm, 1823 - 1847

Autobiographical interpretations of the poem have been used to support the theory that Virginia and Poe never consummated their marriage, as Annabel Lee was a "maiden." However, by all accounts, they adored each other to an almost obsessive degree. Poe’s one-time employer George Rex Graham wrote of their relationship: “His love for his wife was a sort of rapturous worship of the spirit of beauty.”

Virginia’s official cause of death was tuberculosis, which was called “consumption” at the time. In January of 1842, while singing and playing the piano, Clemm began to bleed from her mouth. Poe had believed it was just a ruptured blood-vessel, but it was in fact the first sign of tuberculosis. 

Even before her passing, Poe became inconsolable; his literary works, which had always drifted towards the macabre, became almost exclusively about loss and death. Unable to cope with Clemm’s illness, Poe began drinking heavily. For years, his wife’s health wavered between near death and more promising days of garden-tending and harp-playing. On January 30, 1847, Clemm died, aged 24, following 11 years of marriage to Poe.

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"

Annabel Lee was the last full poem he ever completed. When Poe met his own demise in 1849, at the early age of 40, he was destitute, penniless, and most likely insane.

Poe and Clemm were reunited in death, figuratively and literally. 10 years after the erection of Poe’s Memorial in Baltimore, Maryland, Virginia’s bones were laid to rest by her husband’s side.

In 1944, the band leader Sammy Kaye recited the poem on his "Sunday Serenade" weekly radio broadcast.

The first verse of the poem reads:  

    It was many and many a year ago,
    In a kingdom by the sea,
    That a maiden there lived whom you may know
    By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
    And this maiden she lived with no other thought
    Than to love and be loved by me.

Below - From "Sunday Serenade," Sammy Kaye recites Annabel Lee.