Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe

Virginia Eliza Poe was the wife of the American writer Edgar Allan Poe. The couple were first cousins and publicly married when Virginia Clemm was 13 and Poe was 27. Biographers disagree as to the nature of the couple's relationship. Though their marriage was loving, some biographers suggest they viewed one another more like a brother and sister. In January 1842, she contracted tuberculosis, which grew worse over 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.