Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe (1822–1847) 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".
Read the rest of this article: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Eliza_Clemm_Poe> _______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries: 1798: At the Battle of St. George's Caye, a small force of British settlers called Baymen defeated an invading force from Mexico who were attempting to claim what is now Belize for Spain. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_St._George%27s_Caye> 1897: A peaceful labor demonstration made up of mostly Polish and Slovak anthracite coal miners in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, USA, was fired upon by a sheriff's posse comitatus in the Lattimer Massacre. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lattimer_massacre> 1898: In an act of "propaganda of the deed", Italian anarchist Luigi Lucheni fatally stabbed Empress Elisabeth of Austria in Geneva, Switzerland. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeth_of_Bavaria> 1977: Hamida Djandoubi became the last person to be guillotined in France, the official method of execution in that country. France would later abolish the death penalty in 1981. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/guillotine> 1990: Pope John Paul II consecrated the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace in Yamoussoukro, Côte d'Ivoire, one of the largest churches in the world. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilica_of_Our_Lady_of_Peace_of_Yamoussoukro> _____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day: alabaster (n): 1. A fine-grained white or lightly-tinted variety of gypsum, used ornamentally. 2. (historical) A variety of calcite, translucent and sometimes banded <http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/alabaster> ___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day: Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self. --Cyril Connolly <http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cyril_Connolly> _______________________________________________ Wikipedia Daily Article mailing list. To unsubscribe, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/daily-article-l Questions or comments? Contact [email protected]
