Poe's Life in Boston

EDGAR ALLAN POE to ANNIE RICHMOND
Letter, November 16, 1848 (Extracts)
[Full Text]

Poe laid his heart bare to Annie Richmond, perhaps nowhere more so than in this letter in which he describes his attempted suicide in Boston–an attempt driven by despair of being apart from her, and from which he was apparently rescued by one of the "sympathetic friends" his mother had hoped for. Unwittingly in the final year of his life, the letter also presents Poe's vision of moving to "a Paradise beyond my wildest hopes" where he could be close to Annie and the farm her family owned in Westford, Mass., 23 miles northwest of Boston, only four or five miles west of her home in Lowell.

From a transcription provided by Mrs. Annie Richmond now at the University of Virginia Library and available online courtesy of the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore