HannahWhitmanHeyde Format: TradePaperback

The correspondence of Hannah Whitman Heyde (1823-1908), younger sister of poet Walt Whitman, provides a rare glimpse into the life of a nineteenth-century woman. Married to well-known Vermont landscape artist Charles Louis Heyde (1820-1892), Hannah documented in letters to her mother, Louisa Van Velsor Whitman (1795-1873), and other family members, her lived experience of ongoing physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her husband. Hannah has long been characterized in biographical and scholarly studies of Whitman’s family as a neurotic and a hypochondriac—a narrative promulgated by Heyde himself—but Walt Whitman carefully preserved his sister’s letters, telling his literary biographer that his intention was to document her plight. Hannah’s complete letters, gathered here for the first time and painstakingly edited and annotated by Maire Mullins, provide an important counternarrative, allowing readers insight into the life of a real nineteenth-century woman, sister, and wife to famous men, who endured and eventually survived domestic violence.

HANNAH WHITMAN HEYDE (1823-1908), sister of the poet Walt Whitman, was the fourth child of Walter Whitman Sr. and Louisa Van Velsor Whitman. She was educated in Brooklyn, NY and Hempstead, Long Island. In 1852 she married the landscape painter Charles Louis Heyde (1820-1892), and for forty years, captured her life experience in correspondence with her family.She died at age 85 in Burlington, VT.  

MAIRE MULLINS is a professor of English at Pepperdine University. As a Fulbright Scholar to Japan, Mullins taught at Tokyo Christian Women's University and Tokyo Gakugei University. Her areas of expertise include Walt Whitman, Hannah Whitman Heyde, digital humanities, religion and literature, and gender studies. She lives in Malibu, California, with her husband and daughters.