Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe (
née Clemm; August 15, 1822 – January 30, 1847) was the wife of American writer
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 in that they may have never
consummated their marriage. 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 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 Osgoodand
Elizabeth F. Ellet. 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. After her death, her body was eventually placed under the same memorial marker as her husband's in
Westminster Hall and Burying Ground in Baltimore,
Maryland. Only one image of Virginia Eliza Clemm 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 Edgar Allan Poe, who became despondent and turned to alcohol to cope. 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".
