The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Whitman, Sarah Helen Power

WHITMAN, Sarah Helen Power, American poet: b. Providence, R. I., 1803; d. there, 27 June 1878. She was married to John Whitman, a Boston lawyer, was once engaged

to Edgar Allen Poe, afterward writing a defense of him entitled &lsquo;Edgar A. Poe and His Critics&rsquo; (1860); contributed numerous critical articles and poems to periodicals, and was noted for her conversational powers. Her verse was in part collected in the volume &lsquo;Hours of Life, and Other Poems&rsquo; (1853), and fully in the posthumous &lsquo;Poems&rsquo; (1879). &lsquo;Fairy Ballads&rsquo; and some other works were written with her sister, Anna M. Power. Her finest poem, &lsquo;A Still Day in Autumn,&rsquo; has much melody and beauty of expression and retains an honored place in anthologies.