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 ‘Edgar A. Poe and His Critics’ (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 ‘Hours of Life, and Other Poems’ (1853), and fully in the posthumous ‘Poems’ (1879). ‘Fairy Ballads’ and some other works were written with her sister, Anna M. Power. Her finest poem, ‘A Still Day in Autumn,’ has much melody and beauty of expression and retains an honored place in anthologies.