This image of Sarah Helen Whitman was first made public in Caroline Ticknor’s 1916 biography of Whitman titled, Poe’s Helen. The photo was taken by William Coleman, and is one of multiple photos he took of the poetess during her lifetime. Whitman is seen in profile view as the Greek goddess of war and wisdom, Athena (the same goddess featured as a bust in “The Raven”). Whitman collaged the original photo using clippings from magazines to form the helmet on her head and the frame around her. The photo was taken before 1861, but the exact date is unknown.

In her correspondence with her friend, Julia Deane Freeman, Whitman wrote on July 12, 1861, “I write just to ask where you are & to send specimens of some photographs. Tell me which you like best and you shall have better ones in the style you prefer bye & bye. You can keep two of these. Perhaps I shall ask you to give me back the two you like least, but not immediately. Thinking that fine feathers make fine birds I have costumed two of my photographs which in some of the pictures gives character & is an acknowledged improvement. There is something curious about these pictures—Two represent the left side of the face & two the right side. Those of the left side are both decidedly masculine—the other two as decidedly feminine. Now modern physiologists tell us that the brain is dual & the left side positive.”

In the next letter, Whitman wrote:

“I have been waiting for the return of the man who is to copy my best photographs for you. And now I shall have to defer sending them till my own return…I send such imperfect copies as I have which may serve to remind you of me. The one on the reverse of ‘lady Macbeth’ looks enough like my grandmother to have been taken for her. The eye seems to me my own. The hood was made from the ear of a Gorilla! Cut from Harper’s Magazine.”

Given the statements that Whitman makes in these letters, there are not only two other photos of her exhibiting the left side of her face, but a second “costumed” image of her as lady Macbeth. None of which have ever surfaced.

This particular photo of Whitman costumed as Athena is in the collection of Brown University at the John Hay Library.