Sarah Helen Whitman.
Sarah Helen Whitman Archives.
Sarah Helen Whitman’s papers are stored in four main archives—the Lilly Library at Indiana University, the John Hay Library at Brown University, the Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia, and the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas in Austin.
Below are links to each of the archives with short annotations describing the relevant materials housed in each.
Whitman Mss., 1846-1878 || Lilly Library, Indiana University
The Whitman Mss., 1846-1878 Collection at the Lilly Library, Indiana University, contains 255 letters written by and to Sarah Helen Whitman between 1846-1878. Only fifteen of the letters are by Whitman herself, but the remaining letters were penned by figures of interest to the Whitman scholar. Perhaps most interesting of the correspondence are the following pieces:
1 letter from Anne Lynch Botta, salonnière and close friend
3 letters from Rufus Wilmot Griswold, Poe’s literary executor and main target of SHW’s book Poe and His Critics (1860)
18 letters from Maria Clemm, Poe’s aunt and mother-in-law
2 letters from Richard Henry Stoddard, Poe biographer; 3 letters by SHW are addressed to Stoddard
36 letters from William F. Gill, Poe biographer; 5 letters by SHW are addressed to Gill
15 letters from Eugene L. Didier, Poe biographer; 1 letter by SHW is addressed to Didier
Letters are organized chronologically in twenty-one folders divided between three boxes. The items in this archive have been digitally photocopied and photographs of each item are viewable online.
Sarah Helen Whitman Papers || John Hay Library, Brown University
Sarah Helen Whitman Papers. Brown University is located in Providence, Rhode Island, the city in which Sarah Helen Whitman lived the majority of her life. Many of Whitman’s acquaintances were associated with the University, including her husband, John Winslow Whitman, who took his degree there in 1818.
The Sarah Helen Whitman Papers consist of over six hundred items created or collected by Sarah Helen Whitman. The collection is housed in five boxes which have been divided into seven series:
Series 1. Poems of Sarah Helen Whitman
Series 2. Newspaper articles
Series 3. Miscellaneous notes
Series 4. Legal documents
Series 5. Genealogical information
Series 6. Correspondence from Sarah Helen Whitman
Series 7. Correspondence to Sarah Helen Whitman
Correspondence is organized alphabetically and includes letters to and / or from the following significant figures:
15 letters from Anne Lynch Botta, salonnière and close friend; handwritten draft of 1 letter from SWH.
2 letters from Frances Sargent Osgood, poetess, member of the New York City salon, and friend of Poe.
2 letters and 2 postcards from William Douglas O’Connor, biographer and defender of Walt Whitman. O’Connor edited SHW’s poems for publication after her death.
3 letters from Anna Warner, cousin of SHW and author of “Jesus Loves Me.”
3 letters from Susan Warner, cousin of SHW and author of America’s first bestseller, The Wide, Wide World (1850).
6 letters from Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Daily Tribune. Greeley solicited essays on spiritualism from SHW.
1 letter from Bronson Alcott, father of Louisa May Alcott and educational theorist.
1 letter from John Winslow Whitman, husband of SHW.
9 letters and 3 postcards from William F. Gill, Poe biographer; approximately handwritten drafts of 25 letters from SHW to Gill.
67 letters and 2 postcards from John H. Ingram, Poe biographer; approximately drafts of 71 letters from SHW to Ingram.
3 handwritten drafts of letters from SHW to Richard Stoddard, Poe biographer.
The materials in this collection have not yet been digitized but are available for viewing upon special request to the Center. Detailed descriptions of most of the items are available in the online Inventory list.
Edgar Allan Poe Collection || Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin
The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin houses two separate collections that contain materials related to Sarah Helen Whitman. The first of these is the “Edgar Allan Poe Collection” presented here, the second is the “John Grier Varner Papers” presented in the next section.
The Edgar Allan Poe Collection. This collection consists of 13 document boxes, 1 oversize box, 3 galley folders, and 9 oversize folders of materials regarding Edgar Allan Poe. Buried in Box 10, Folder 13 of this collection are five letters (twenty-five pages total) written by SHW to her friend Mary Elizabeth Moore Hewitt between September 27, 1850 and May 22, 1851.
These pages have been digitally photocopied and may be viewed online.
John Grier Varner Papers || Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin
The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin houses two separate collections that contain materials related to Sarah Helen Whitman. The first of these is the “Edgar Allan Poe Collection” presented in the previous section, the second is the “John Grier Varner Papers” presented here.
The John Grier Varner Papers. John Grier Varner was an English Professor at the University of Texas at Austin whose interest in Edgar Allan Poe led him to a study of Sarah Helen Whitman. This study developed into a thesis project, “Poe and Mrs. Whitman: A Study of the Documents of Sarah Helen Whitman” and a dissertation project, “Sarah Helen Whitman: Seeress of Providence” (1940), the latter of which remains one of the only scholarly analyses of her life.
Varner’s papers include twelve boxes of materials, a large portion of which document his research of SHW. These materials include his notes on and the extensive sources he collected regarding the Whitman family’s history, the history of Providence, the development of spiritualism in American culture, and the locations in which SHW lived and to which she traveled. More significantly, this collection includes transcriptions and photostats of manuscript materials created by SHW housed in private collections that are otherwise unavailable to the public.
The materials in this collection have not yet been digitized but are available for viewing upon special request to the Center.
John Henry Ingram’s Poe Collection ca. 1829 - ca. 1915 || Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia.
The John Henry Ingram’s Poe Collection. The materials in this collection were amassed over the course of nearly forty years by John Henry Ingram, English biographer and champion of Edgar Allan Poe. Of the four Poe biographers that corresponded with SHW, Ingram was by far the most meticulous, as is demonstrated by the extensive scope of his archives.
While the archive is titled the “Ingram” collection, a glance through its contents reveals that it might almost be called the “Ingram-Whitman” collection. Ingram certainly was the mastermind behind the project and collected materials beyond SHW’s purview, but a vast percentage of the materials in the archive were provided to him through the painstaking efforts of SHW. Indeed, SHW dominates the materials until the year of her death; a search for the name “Whitman” in the archive’s inventory yields 455 results.
Among the materials SHW contributed to this archive are the following:
Nearly 100 handwritten letters from SHW to Ingram. As a rule, these letters are no shorter than four pages a piece and are often much longer, ranging to fourteen pages apiece
Copies of 6 letters from Poe to SHW
Approximately 10 letters by SHW to George Eveleth, a poet-friend of Poe
3 letters exchanged between SHW and Maria Clemm, Poe’s aunt and mother-in-law
Clippings of pieces by and about Poe from contemporary journals, often with her own annotations
Clippings of her own pieces, also with personal annotations
The complete collection consists of 1,000 items divided into 4 series and stored in 18 boxes. All items are arranged chronologically within categories. The materials in this collection have not yet been digitized but are available for viewing upon special request to the Special Collections Library. Detailed descriptions of most of the items are available in the online Inventory list.
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Archival Anecdote: The materials in this archive were catalogued in the 1940s by John Carl Miller, then a graduate student at the University of Virginia. Miller went on to write of his findings in this collection and of the collection itself in two volumes: Building Poe Biography (1977) and Poe’s Helen Remembers (1979), the latter of which reproduces the letters exchanged between Ingram and SHW as well as other relevant letters in the collection.
Digital Commonwealth || Boston Public Library
The Digital Commonwealth is an initiative of the Boston Public Library founded in 2006 to aid in expanding the availability of their archival material to the public. Amongst their digitizations on this site are eight items related to SHW that figure in their physical holdings:
3 letters from SHW to Rufus Griswold, well-known American editor and Edgar Allan Poe’s libelous literary executor
1 letter from Mary Elizabeth Hewitt Stebbins to SHW
4 manuscript poems by SHW
ArchiveGrid
ArchiveGrid contains more than 5 million record descriptions of materials housed in over 1,000 archives. Due to this scope, ArchiveGrid generates a helpful list of materials related to SHW that are available across multiple university collections together with links to each item in the collection; however, almost none of these links lead to digitized copies of materials.