Sarah Elmira Royster

Biography

Sarah Elmira Royster spent her early years in Richmond, forging a deep friendship with Edgar Allan Poe that would, through letters and stories shared for decades, become part of the city’s literary memory while she steadfastly devoted herself to family and kin.

In later life she returned to this city, received visitors with warmth, and remained a gracious presence whose simple hospitality and recollections of youth comforted those who came to her beside Shockoe Hill.