Is This Why Edgar Allan Poe Never Had Kids?

Two mysteries dominate discussions of Edgar Allan Poe, whose tales of revenge and murder still captivate us. First, there are the strange circumstances of his death in October of 1849. Then there’s the even stranger matter of his marriage to his much younger cousin, Virginia. What was the nature of their relationship? Was it sexual, and if so, why didn’t they have children?

“I was a child and she was a child,” Poe wrote in “Annabel Lee,” his late-life poem seemingly inspired by his marriage. In fact, Poe was 27 when, in May of 1836, he wed in a boarding-house parlor. She was not quite 14, an exceptionally young bride even by the standards of their day. As offensive as the marriage may be to modern mores, it appears to have been motivated by—Virginia’s mother—consented to the union, and always lived with the couple afterward.