I want to know all about the backround of "Annabel Lee"

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I desperately need to know about this poem. It it for a paper and personal interest.

-- Anonymous, October 17, 2000

Answers

Carolyn,

It is thought that the poem "Annabel Lee" was written in the spring of 1849 as Poe was preparing for a lecture tour. The poem is mentioned in a letter to Annie Richmond in a promise to send her a copy. It is known that he made several copies and signed several of them for his friends. It has been said that the name Annabel Lee was used or selected for its musical and rythmic quality.

There were several women to come forward and claim themselves as the inspiration for the poem. However, it was thought by his close friend Frances S. Osgood to have been written with his beloved wife, Virginia, in mind. In fact, in a letter to Rufus W. Griswold from Ms Osgood, she says, "... the exquisite pathos of the poem lately written, of which she [Virginia] was the subject, and which is by far the most natural, simple, tender and touchingly beautiful of all his songs. I have heard it said that it was intended to illustrate a late love affair of the author; but they who believe this, have in their dullness, evidently misunderstood or missed the beautiful meaning latent in the most lovely of all its verses - where he says,

'A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling

My beautiful Annabel Lee,

So that her high-born kinsmen came,

And bore her away from me.'"

(Edgar Allan Poe - A Critical Biography by Arthur Hobson Quinn)

The poem was first printed in the New York Tribune on October 9, 1849 as Edgar was being laid to rest in Baltimore.

Regards,

-- Anonymous, October 19, 2000


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