Did Edgar Allan Poe say "We loved with a love that was more than love"?

Q: Did Edgar Allan Poe say "We loved with a love that was more than love"?

Yes. This is the ninth line of Poe's poem "Annabel Lee," completed in the months before his death and first printed just two days after it, in October 1849. The exact wording is unchanged across every one of the eleven documented manuscript and published versions of the poem.

Who really said it

We loved with a love that was more than love

Written by Edgar Allan Poe 1809–1849 · American poet, short-story writer & literary critic

Verified Free to reuse

This is the ninth line of Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee,” completed in the months before his death and first printed just two days after it, in October 1849. The exact wording is unchanged across every one of the eleven documented manuscript and published versions of the poem.

Last verified 8 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“We loved with a love that was more than love” Edgar Allan Poe, Annabel Lee (1849)

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Provenance

The source

Work: Annabel Lee
Composed: By May 1849
First published: New-York Daily Tribune, October 9, 1849 (posthumous, unauthorized); first authorized printing in Sartain's Union Magazine, January 1850

I was a child and she was a child, / In this kingdom by the sea, / But we loved with a love that was more than love— / I and my Annabel Lee— / With a love that the wingèd seraphs of heaven / Coveted her and me.

The popular standalone quotation drops the poem's opening word “But” and the closing em dash.

Read Annabel Lee in the Mabbott critical edition, with full textual history

How we verified this

Poe had completed “Annabel Lee” by May 1849, per a letter cited by the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore ↗, and gave manuscript copies to several acquaintances before his death that October.
It first reached print two days after Poe died, in Rufus Griswold's obituary notice in the New-York Daily Tribune ↗ (Oct 9, 1849).
The line appears with identical wording across all eleven surviving manuscript and print versions from 1849–1850, according to the Mabbott critical edition ↗.
The full poem, including this line, is preserved at Wikisource ↗ and reproduced by the Academy of American Poets ↗.

Public domain

“Annabel Lee” was first published in 1849–1850, well before the U.S. public-domain cutoff, so the poem and this line are in the public domain in the United States.

Context

The last poem Poe wrote

“Annabel Lee” was among the very last things Edgar Allan Poe wrote, completed only months before he died in October 1849 under still-disputed circumstances. It tells of a childhood love so pure that envious angels “in Heaven” conspire to take the beloved away, leaving the narrator to keep loving her beyond death.

The poem is often read as an elegy connected to the women in Poe's life — most commonly his young wife Virginia Clemm Poe, who had died two years earlier — though Poe left no direct statement confirming a single inspiration.

But we loved with a love that was more than love—

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Love

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Annabel Lee (Mabbott critical edition, with all textual variants)eapoe.org

Scholarly critical edition documenting composition date and all eleven 1849–1850 versions of the poem

Annabel Lee, full texten.wikisource.org

Public-domain full text of the poem as published in The Works of the Late Edgar Allan Poe, Vol. II (1850)

Annabel Leepoets.org

Academy of American Poets reproduction of the full poem

Annabel Leepoemuseum.org

Poe Museum's page on the poem, noting its posthumous 1849 publication

Annabel Leeen.wikipedia.org

Background on composition, publication history, and critical reception

The author

About Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe

1809–1849 · American poet, short-story writer & literary critic

Poe was a founding figure of American Gothic fiction and the modern detective story, best known for poems like The Raven and tales such as The Tell-Tale Heart. Annabel Lee was the last poem he completed, appearing in print only after his death in October 1849.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Poe, Edgar Allan. “Annabel Lee.” Sartain's Union Magazine of Literature and Art, January 1850 (first authorized printing); first published posthumously in the New-York Daily Tribune, October 9, 1849.

MLA (9th ed.)

Poe, Edgar Allan. “Annabel Lee.” Sartain’s Union Magazine of Literature and Art, Jan. 1850.

APA (7th ed.)

Poe, E. A. (1850). Annabel Lee. Sartain’s Union Magazine of Literature and Art.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘We loved with a love that was more than love’?” Last verified 8 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/we-loved-with-a-love-that-was-more-than-love