Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee” was first published in 1849. Poe likely composed it earlier that year, and the poem appeared publicly just two days after his death in an obituary written by Rufus Wilmot Griswold for the New-York Daily Tribune.
The poem tells of a love that begins in a “kingdom by the sea” and continues after Annabel Lee’s death. Its speaker claims that angels caused her death because they envied the strength of the couple’s love. The work is widely associated with Poe’s recurring themes of beauty, mourning, and the death of a beloved woman.
A common source of confusion is the date 1850. Sartain’s Union Magazine published the first authorized magazine printing in January 1850, but the poem had already appeared in newspapers in October and November 1849. Because the question asks when it was published generally, 1849 is the accepted answer.