WWBA is delighted to present  present Maire Mullins, professor of English at Pepperdine University, to discuss her new book, Hannah Whitman Heyde: The Complete Correspondence.

The the correspondence of Hannah Whitman Heyde (1823-1908), younger sister of poet Walt Whitman, provides a rare glimpse into the life of Hannah Whitman Heyed (1823-1908), a real nineteenth-century woman. Married to well-known Vermont landscape artist Charles Louis Heyde (1820-1892), Hannah documented in letters her lived experience of ongoing physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her husband. Mullins edited and annotated Hannah’s complete letters providing an important groundbreaking counter-narrative insight into her life as a woman who endured and eventually survived domestic violence.

Q&A will follow.

Maire Mullins is the Blanche E. Seaver Chair of English Literature at Pepperdine University, where she teaches courses in American Literature. Her essays on Walt Whitman have appeared in many journals, including Walt Whitman in Context; Walt Whitman: A Companion; The Walt Whitman Quarterly Review; and The Walt Whitman Encyclopedia. For research, Mullins visited WWBA to read an authentic handwritten letter of Hannah Whitman-Heyde in the WWBA archives.