A Romantic Love Letter written by Edgar Allen Poe to Sarah Helen Whitman.

Most of us will have  read a story  by Edgar Allen Poe — the American poet and writer — famous for his unusual stories almost all of which had a strange twist to their ending. I remember staying up late to watch a television series of his short stories They were always shown late at night due to their content and the dramatic twist which was very rarely ever what you expected to happen. Even when you took into account it was not going to be a straight forward plot ending and went to guess something unusual it was almost always something different again.

Poe had a lot of problems in his all of romantic relationships. For example his first wife Virginia  died shortly after the wedding but it turned out she had falsified her age and claimed to be 21 when she was actually only 13. Not sure if Edgar Allen Poe knew about the age when they got married or it only came out afterwards. However as both his and her family were at the wedding it would surprising for people not to have made it known in discussions. Although even in those times it would have been illegal for a girl of her age to marry it was not unusual in that area of the country for young cousins (as they were) to marry and keep it all hidden within the family.

Another engagement with Sarah Helen Whitman (to whom the letter below was written) was destroyed by the woman’s mother who thought that a relationship with Edgar Allen Poe was not a suitable match for her daughter. It was known taht Edgar Allen Poe had taken to a drinking a lot and some very erratic behavior which would not have helped him win over his prospective mother in laws affections.

Many people thought these problems were the reason he wrote so many stories about beautiful women dying.

It is believed that this romantic love letter was written October 1, 1848

I cannot better explain to you what I felt than by saying that your unknown heart seemed to pass into my bosom – there to dwell forever – while mine, I thought, was translated into your own.

From that hour I loved you. Yes, I now feel that it was then – on that evening of sweet dreams – that the very first dawn of human love burst upon the icy night of my spirit. Since that period I have never seen nor heard your name without a shiver half of delight, half of anxiety… for years your name never past my lips, while my soul drank in, with a delirious thirst, all that was uttered in my presence respecting you.

The merest whisper that concerned you awoke in me a shuddering sixth sense, vaguely compounded of fear, ecstatic happiness, and a wild, inexplicable sentiment that resembled nothing so nearly as the consciousness of guilt.

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Sarah Helen Whitman was another American writer and a poet. Edgar’s wife (Virginia) had died just However as set out above for various reasons Sarah and he never formed what we would call a serious romantic relationship. He himself died just a few short years later having been destroyed by alcohol and depression.

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