Lindsey Graham

Poe was furious with himself for failing to provide her with decent food or a warm home, and in January 1847, she finally succumbed to her disease, dying of tuberculosis at the age of 24, the same age as Poe's mother.

Poe's grief was like nothing he had ever experienced.

He sank into a severe depression, one that would plague him for the few remaining years of his life.

In 1847, Edgar Allan Poe turned to alcohol to escape his grief and guilt over his wife Virginia's death.

One friend recalled, he did not seem to care after she was gone whether he lived an hour, a day, a week, or a year.

She was his all.

Poe's own health was declining rapidly.

His chronic fever worsened and a doctor noticed that he had an irregular heartbeat.

But even as he grieved, he was desperate to find a new wife with the means to take care of him and finance a literary magazine.

Over the course of 1848, he courted three different women.

Each courtship ended in disaster due to his heavy drinking and his guilt over the thought of remarrying.

But despite his emotional turmoil, he continued writing.

And he returned to a familiar theme, the death of a beautiful woman.

In May 1849, he completed Annabelle Lee, a poem about a love so profound it transcends death.

In this work, Poe mixed romantic and gothic themes, beginning the poem with imagery reminiscent of fairy tales, before vengeful angels kill Annabelle Lee out of jealousy.

By the spring of 1849, Poe was spending most of his time traveling up and down the East Coast lecturing, raising funds to start a magazine, and drinking.

He told one friend, I am full of dark forebodings.

Nothing cheers or comforts me.

My life seems wasted.

The future looks a dreary blank.