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Disputes Over the Mystery Woman in Poe's "Annabel Lee"

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Upon Edgar Allan Poe's death, several women have enthusiastically come forward to claim themselves as Poe's inspiration for his last full length poem, "Annabel Lee." Adding more fuel to the fire, several literary critics question the originality of "Annabel Lee" due to its similar structure and or theme to several other poems, suggesting that "Annabel Lee" interprets more figuratively rather than literally. Because of the mysterious inspiration behind the words of Poe's "Annabel Lee," context clues support the idea of similarity between his poem and others, mainly an earlier poem by poet Frances Sargent Osgood, as well as several claims for identification of the lost visage of Annabel Lee. In the last six months of his life Poe wrote his last full-length poem of "Annabel Lee" and left the world with a variety of unanswered questions, the majority revolving around the true identity of Annabel Lee herself. Despite the multitude of women who have claimed themselves as Annabel Lee, critic Bradford A. Booth believes leaving the identity of Annabel Lee as anonymous enhances "the emotional texture of the poem" seeing as no poet should be expected to "annotate his verses" (Booth, 1945, p.17). However, with context clues taken into consideration, the woman behind "Annabel Lee" ultimately comes down to two of the most influential women of Poe's life: Virginia Clemm Poe and Sarah Elmira Royster Shelton (Booth). Upon initial reading of "Annabel Lee," an immediate assumption

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