This engraving was featured in Rufus Griswold’s 1863 third edition of The Female Poets of America. Sarah Helen Whitman is rendered as a refined, elegant marble bust. The engraving was done by John Rogers from an original picture of Whitman. The artist likely used a copy of Joseph White’s 1856 daguerreotype as a reference for the drawing since the profile of Whitman’s face is similar in both the daguerreotype and the engraving.

It is worth noting that there were prospects of erecting an actual bust of Whitman in Providence’s Roger Williams Park after her death. I discovered this in a newspaper clipping cut by Maude Dailey’s daughter, Louise Chace. The clipping was among many other Whitman-related articles that were pasted in a scrapbook compiled by Louise Chace, now in the collection of Brown University at the John Hay Library.

The two-line clipping gives no real details, and we know that the idea never came to fruition. It is interesting that someone intended to memorialize Whitman in Providence shortly after her death. While the idea of a public statue of Whitman was talked about over a century ago, there are still no public tributes to her in the city today.