Anne Gilchrist

Anne Gilchrist (née Burrows; 25 February 182829 November 1885) was an English writer, best known for her connection to American poet Walt Whitman.

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 family, and married the art and literary critic Alexander Gilchrist in 1851 after a two-year engagement.

She is perhaps best known for developing a deep attachment to Walt Whitman when she read Leaves of Grass 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. When she eventually travelled to Philadelphia, in 1876, she met Whitman and they formed a lasting friendship. She moved to New England in 1878, but returned to England the following year. In 1883, she published a biography of the writer Mary Lamb.