The Home Life of Poe

The following work, written by Susan Archer Weiss, examines the domestic aspect of Edgar Allan Poe's life. He was married to Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe, who was his first cousin. Controversially, Virginia was 13 and Poe was 27 when they married. Biographers disagree as to the nature of the couple's relationship. She contracted tuberculosis, growing worse for five years until she died of the disease at the age of 24 in the family's cottage, at that time outside New York City.