Betty Leicester

While designing the book cover for Jewett’s work for young people, Betty Leicester (1890), Whitman wrote, “Dear fellow traveler — do you think Betty is a Chrysanthemum kind of a flower? In my brief but very clear glimpse of her in a few pages… I get this idea of her…” –

Sarah Wyman Whitman (Letter to Sarah Orne Jewett, November 1889) MS Am 1743.1 (107) Houghton Library, Harvard University

For the 1904 edition of the book, Houghton Mifflin had a new cover design created. Jewett asked the publisher to restore Whitman’s design.