In Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee,” where does the speaker say Annabel Lee lived?

In Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee,” the speaker says Annabel Lee lived in a kingdom by the sea. This opening setting gives the poem the atmosphere of a fairy tale while also placing the lovers beside the recurring sea imagery.

The speaker says he and Annabel Lee loved each other with a love stronger than that of older people around them. He attributes her death to angels who envied their happiness, though the poem presents that explanation as the grieving speaker’s belief rather than an objective event.

Poe wrote “Annabel Lee” in 1849, and it was published after his death in the Southern Literary Messenger. The poem is often read as an elegy, a lyric poem mourning the dead, and critics frequently connect its intense grief with Poe’s repeated treatment of lost women.

The kingdom is not identified by a historical name. Its vagueness is deliberate: the phrase creates a legendary setting, while the sea, wind, moon, and stars reinforce the poem’s musical repetition and dreamlike mood.