The Vigil For Virginia

"The Vigil for Virginia" immerses the reader in the desolate, frigid world of Edgar Allan Poe's Fordham cottage in 1847, as he keeps a final vigil over his young, consumptive wife, Virginia Clemm Poe.

Huddled by the sputtering lamplight, Poe battles immense guilt and a terror that his own dark literary fixations somehow invited the "grim demon" of disease into their lives. The constant, weary presence of his mother-in-law, Maria Clemm, provides the only fragile anchor in the room as Virginia, frail and ethereal, offers her final, heartbreaking words.