![Mrs](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/Mrs._Anne_Gilchrist_%281828-1885%29.jpg)
Anne Gilchrist (née Burrows; 25 February 182829 November 1885) was an English writer, best known for her connection to American poet
Walt Whitman
Walter Whitman (; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among t ...
.
Life
She was born in 1828 to John Parker and Henrietta Burrows. Her father died after a horse riding accident when she was eleven and she was brought up in London.
She came from a distinguished
Essex
Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...
family, and married the art and literary critic
Alexander Gilchrist
Alexander Gilchrist (182830 November 1861), an English author, is known mainly as a biographer of William Etty and of William Blake. Gilchrist's biography of Blake is still a standard reference work about the poet.
Gilchrist was born at Newingto ...
in 1851 after a two year engagement.
Five years later, in
Chelsea
Chelsea or Chelsey may refer to:
Places Australia
* Chelsea, Victoria
Canada
* Chelsea, Nova Scotia
* Chelsea, Quebec
United Kingdom
* Chelsea, London, an area of London, bounded to the south by the River Thames
** Chelsea (UK Parliament consti ...
, west London, the couple became next-door neighbours of
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle (4 December 17955 February 1881) was a Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher. A leading writer of the Victorian era, he exerted a profound influence on 19th-century art, literature and philosophy.
Born in Ecclefechan, Dum ...
and
Jane Welsh Carlyle
Jane Baillie Carlyle ( Welsh; 14 July 1801 – 21 April 1866) was a Scottish writer and the wife of Thomas Carlyle.
She did not publish any work in her lifetime, but she was widely seen as an extraordinary letter writer. Virginia Woolf ca ...
, both of them notable writers. The Gilchrists' marriage, one of intellectual equals, was cut short when Alexander died of
scarlet fever
Scarlet fever, also known as Scarlatina, is an infectious disease caused by ''Streptococcus pyogenes'' a Group A streptococcus (GAS). The infection is a type of Group A streptococcal infection (Group A strep). It most commonly affects childr ...
in 1861. Her daughter Beatrice had originally caught the disease and then her son,
Percy
The English surname Percy is of Norman origin, coming from Normandy to England, United Kingdom. It was from the House of Percy, Norman lords of Northumberland, derives from the village of Percy-en-Auge in Normandy. From there, it came into use ...
, suffered it as his sister recovered. Her husband caught the disease from his son.
She was left with their four children: Percy, Beatrice, Herbert, and Grace. One of the reasons for the family's move to
Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...
in 1876 was Beatrice's desire to attend medical school. Beatrice eventually became a physician in
Edinburgh
Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian ...
, but she killed herself shortly thereafter. Percy had a successful career developing a new and economic way of making steel and Herbert was a minor painter.
Work
After her husband's death in 1861, Anne completed his ''
Life of Blake'' and was an active contributor to magazines.
She is perhaps best known for developing a deep attachment to Walt Whitman when she read ''
Leaves of Grass
''Leaves of Grass'' is a poetry collection by American poet Walt Whitman. Though it was first published in 1855, Whitman spent most of his professional life writing and rewriting ''Leaves of Grass'', revising it multiple times until his death. Th ...
'' in 1869, and for writing the first great criticism of that work, ''A Woman's Estimate of Walt Whitman''; their correspondence was initiated through
William Michael Rossetti
William Michael Rossetti (25 September 1829 – 5 February 1919) was an English writer and critic.
Early life
Born in London, Rossetti was a son of immigrant Italian scholar Gabriele Rossetti and his wife Frances Rossetti ''née'' Polidor ...
.
When she eventually travelled to Philadelphia, in 1876, she met Whitman and they formed a lasting friendship. She moved to
New England
New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...
in 1878, but returned to England the following year. In 1883, she published a biography of the writer
Mary Lamb
Mary Anne Lamb (3 December 1764 – 20 May 1847) was an English writer. She is best known for the collaboration with her brother Charles on the collection ''Tales from Shakespeare'' (1807). Mary suffered from mental illness, and in 1796, aged 3 ...
.
References
Further reading
* Alcaro, Marion Walker. (1991). ''Walt Whitman's Mrs. G: A Biography of Anne Gilchrist''. .
* Cavitch, Max. (2005)
"Audience Terminable and Interminable: Anne Gilchrist, Walt Whitman, and the Achievement of Disinhibited Reading."''Victorian Poetry'' 43(2): 249-61.
*Gilchrist, Herbert Harlakenden, ed. (1887). ''Anne Gilchrist: Life and Writings''. Unwin.
*
Gould, Elizabeth Porter. (1900). ''Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman''. Philadelphia: David McCay.
*
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Gilchrist, Anne
English literary critics
Women literary critics
English biographers
1828 births
1885 deaths
19th-century British journalists
English expatriates in the United States