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. Five years later, in Chelsea, west London, the couple became next-door neighbours of Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh Carlyle, both of them notable writers. The Gilchrists' marriage, one of intellectual equals, was cut short when Alexander died of scarlet fever in 1861. Her daughter Beatrice had originally caught the disease and then her son, Percy, 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 in 1876 was Beatrice's desire to attend medical school. Beatrice eventually became a physician in Edinburgh, 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.