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and Virginia’s worsening condition prompted their move to healthier surroundings in Fordham, where they rented a country cottage. Still unwell, Poe prepared for Godey’s a series on the “New York Literati,” flattering friends and abusing enemies in pithy sketches. He also continued his “Marginalia” series but composed only one notable new tale—perhaps inspired by his feud with English—titled “The Cask of Amontillado.” The “Literati” sketch portraying English as an ignorant charlatan elicited a slanderous reply for which Poe eventually received a legal settlement. But in 1846 he increasingly became an object of private gossip and public derision by “little birds of prey”; alluding to his latest renunciation of drink, he called Virginia his “only stimulus now to battle with this uncongenial, unsatisfactory, and ungrateful life.” In letters to Philip Pendleton Cooke and George W. Evelith, he nevertheless revealed his determination to publish The Stylus, the “one great purpose” of his literary life. But at year’s end that goal seemed remote; both Poe and Virginia were bedridden in Fordham, attended by Mrs. Clemm and Marie Louise Shew, a friend with nursing experience.

For Virginia, the end came on January 30, 1847. On her deathbed she asked her husband to read Mrs. Shew a poignant letter from the second Mrs. John Allan, confessing that she had turned Poe’s foster father against him. Virginia’s death and burial prostrated Poe, and although he composed a poem (“The Beloved Physician”) for Mrs. Shew when she nursed him back to health, he wrote little else in 1847. His lawsuit against English briefly provided distraction from grief and, after a favorable ruling, relief from penury. That summer Poe visited Thomas in Washington and called at the office of Graham’s in Philadelphia, perhaps to deliver a new review of Hawthorne that appeared in the November issue. His only significant literary composition since Virginia’s death, however, was “Ulalume,” a mystical poem transparently inspired by her loss. He received attentions from several literary women and composed for Sarah Anna Lewis the anagrammatic poem, “An Enigma.” Across the Atlantic his work had attracted the attention of Charles Baudelaire, the poet whose translations would enshrine Poe as a literary deity in France.

Recovering his vigor, Poe turned again in 1848 to the grand, unfinished project of launching a monthly magazine; he printed a prospectus and planned a tour to attract subscribers. He intended to feature his long-deferred study of “Literary America,” providing a “faithful account” of the nation’s “literary productions, literary people, and literary affairs.” Simultaneously he was penning Eureka, a cosmological prose poem, to elaborate his insights into life and death, matter and spirit, God and humankind. To finance his tour he gave a lecture called “The Universe” in February, but according to Evert Duyckinck, his “ludicrous dryness” actually “drove people from the room.” Hoping to extract a salable tale from his magnum opus Poe sent the futuristic satire “Mellonta Tauta” to Godey’s, which published it thirteen months later. He also contributed more “Marginalia” to Graham’s and tried to ignore journalistic taunting by English. Having completed a year of mourning, Poe found himself increasingly pursued by literary women, and he contemplated remarriage. The kindnesses of Mrs. Shew (a married woman) inspired a valentine poem, and Poe drafted a version of “The Bells” at her home, but his pantheism so troubled her that she broke off the friendship. A widow, Sarah Helen Whitman, published a valentine poem to Poe in the Home Journal, and he reciprocated by sending her a poem recalling a glimpse of her in 1845. Another married poet, Jane Ermina Locke, came to Fordham to meet Poe and invite him to lecture in Lowell, Massachusetts. During a July visit there he lectured on American poetry and met Annie Richmond, a young married woman who quickly became his muse and confidante. The encounter inspired part of “Landor’s Cottage,” a landscape sketch composed later that year.