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>
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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>
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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>
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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>