Why Have'nt I heard of Annabelle Lee in Poe's biography's, they never speak of her Why?

-- Anonymous, January 17, 2003

Answers

Mainly because it is a fictitious name! Read Mabbott's "Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Poems" the section on that poem. The origins of both the fictitious name and possible references to women in Poe's life is well discussed. Poe was often in the habit of renaming or nicknaming lady friends with more sonorous names, however there are many poems of the most artistic type that rally are far beyond or removed from any actual person. Annabel Lee is somewhere in between, complicated by Poe's own uses of the poem for career and romance in that desperate time shortly before his death. Some things seem to refer to Virginia, others to Helen Whitman or possibly others.

-- Anonymous, January 17, 2003

Many people believe that this poem was the last one that Poe wrote also that this inspired by his wife Virginia after she died, Others believe to be for his school sweetheart but she distanced herself from Poe many years before he wrote the poem.

-- Anonymous, November 17, 2003