Talk:Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe

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Good article Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe has been listed as one of the Language and literature good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can delist it, or ask for a reassessment.
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[edit] Pet name

i remember reading somewhere that poe called her "sis" as a nickname —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ian-Callihan (talk • contribs) 16:13, 16 February 2007 (UTC).

I had added this in, based on the suggestion, but it was recently removed. I reverted that removal but I wanted to add more later. It may take some time (I'm out of town away from my sources). But, just as justification, the fact that Poe called his wife "Sis" is a huge indication of the kind of relationship it is theorized they had. There are huge debates about the kind of "love" the two shared, noting that they never had children and never shared a bedroom. I will certainly expand on this but, in the meantime, please don't remove that source piece of information. As an aside, even without the discussion about their relationship, Virginia is only notable because of Poe so it is quite important to note what he called her, I would think. --Midnightdreary 16:38, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
I agree, Poe's love for Virgina although uncovensinal was important part of his motives behind many of his works --Mdavies 965 (talk) 10:59, 10 March 2008 (UTC) Matthew Davies 14
Well, if you noticed the article has a much-expanded discussion of their relationship. You may also have noticed that you were responding to a post that was from eight months ago. --Midnightdreary (talk) 14:01, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Name

Okay, I've been keeping an eye out for Virginia's full name. I have yet to find any source that calls her "Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe." I'm proposing this article be moved to "Virginia Clemm Poe" unless someone can find a source that gives "Eliza" as her middle name. Thanks! --Midnightdreary 23:05, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, the Baltimore Poe Society does list her with Eliza as a middle name ([1]), and they are certainly a good enough source for me. Even so, I don't know if she is traditionally referred to as anything other than "Virginia Clemm" or "Virginia Poe." I'm still considering moving the article to "Virginia Poe," if only to make it easier to find but also because WP:COMMONNAME suggests that article titles should be common names (i.e. Bill Clinton instead of "William Jefferson Clinton") Opinions and comments welcome. --Midnightdreary 21:05, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Virginia vs. Edgar vs. Poe

I'm hoping I am avoiding ambiguity here, but the article currently refers to Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe as "Virginia" throughout, not by either of her last names. Her husband is referred to consistently as "Poe", except in the section which also mentions Neilson Poe. In that section, one is Edgar, the other is Neilson. I'm hoping this is a safe way to refer to them without being ambiguous or informal. Any thoughts? --Midnightdreary (talk) 16:40, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] GA Review

I'm just going to go ahead and pass this. It's impeccably well-sourced. It's generally well-written. It's engaging and interesting. I see no significant problems with MoS or images (though I'm no expert in either). No problems with NPOV, edit wars, etc.

There is, of course, room for improvement. Some of the writing is sometimes a little awkward. There are a lot of short sentences. And in some ways if anything it's over-sourced: you keep tripping over footnotes. So sometimes it doesn't flow as well as it might: the over all effect is rather staccato. There are perhaps too many details. No doubt there's some over-compensation for what is, in the end, a rather short and relatively uneventful life!

I've made a bunch of copy-edits, and there are some questions hidden away in the text.

But this was a nice article to read. I do recommend you work on it further and submit it to FAC.

Congratulations! --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 02:25, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the review - the copy edits were quite helpful, too! I see what you mean about over-sourcing and the sort of staccato effect on some of the writing; I never thought of it that way. I'll wrap my head around this and see how much work I can do. You're right, though, It's hard to write a lot about someone who really lead such a simple life as Virginia! --Midnightdreary (talk) 02:42, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
No problem. Thanks to you for all your work on this article. --jbmurray (talk|contribs) 03:14, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] A few comments from Awadewit

This was such an enjoyable article to read! Thanks! I just have a few suggestions:

  • Before taking the article to FAC, you might want to copy edit it a bit more or have someone else copy edit it. There sentences are a bit choppy in places.
  • The "Osgood/Ellet scandal" section seems a bit too detailed to me. Perhaps more summary style there?
  • I would delete the "Appearance" section and integrate any important quotations into the body of the article and the portrait information into the "Death" section. You might ask yourself why Edgar Allan Poe doesn't contain an "Appearance" section. :)
  • It is difficult to write an article about a couple with the same last name and stick to the policy of referring to biographical subjects by their last name, however it is important to try and refer to "Virginia Poe" as either "Poe" or "Virginia Poe". Calling her "Virginia" is informal and, as historians have pointed out, as such tends to dismiss the value of women in the past. I'm encountering the same problem in the Mary Shelley article (she was married to Percy Bysshe Shelley). Critics used to refer to her as "Mary" and "Mrs. Shelley". One solution is to refer to "Virginia" or "Edgar" when there is a need to differentiate and "Poe" or "Virginia Poe" when referring to her.

I hope these suggestions are helpful and I look forward to seeing the article at FAC. Let me know when the featured topic is ready, too! Awadewit (talk) 18:40, 18 May 2008 (UTC)