Home > Annabel Lee Summary & Study Guide

Annabel Lee | Introduction

Written in 1849, "Annabel Lee" was published the same year, just two days after Poe's death on October 7. It appeared in two newspapers, the Richmond Examiner and the New York Tribune, and then in the 1850 edition of The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe. The poem has since become one of Poe's most popular works. Using a melodious narrative form, the speaker laments the death, many years ago, of his beloved young bride Annabel Lee. His loss moves him to state that envious angels caused the girl's death to "dissever" (separate) the young married couple. He tells briefly of her funeral and entombment "in her sepulchre … by the sea." The narrator then reveals that he has been unable to accept their separation. Since her death, he has spent night after night at her tomb, an astonishing and perverse example of the immortality of young love.

Annabel Lee Summary

"Annabel Lee" was the last poem that Poe composed, and was first published in November, 1849, in The Southern Literary Messenger, a month or so after his death. It is comprised of six stanzas, three of which have six lines and three of which have eight lines, with the rhyme pattern differing slightly in each one.

The poem is related by a first-person voice who was actively involved in the events which he now... » Complete Annabel Lee Summary