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Brooklyn | Tuesday morning October 1st | 1861

Mr. Lowell,

Dear Sir: The price of "1861," if you print it, is $20. You are at liberty to make any verbal alterations. The envelope is of course to return it in, if you cannot use it.²

Yours truly

W. Whitman

The text presented here is derived from Edwin Haviland Miller, ed., Walt Whitman: The Correspondence, 6 vols. (New York: New York University Press, 1961–77). For a detailed description of discrepancies between this electronic edition and the print source, see our statement of editorial policy.

The typescript of this letter, dated October 1, 1861, was once held by Emory Holloway, and can also be found in Emory Holloway, ed., Walt Whitman—Complete Poetry & Selected Prose and Letters (London: Nonesuch Press, 1938), 887.

1.  Address: J. R. Lowell | Atlantic Magazine.  (Back)

2.  On October 8, 1861, Lowell wrote to James T. Fields: "I enclose . . . three [poems] from Walt Whitman. '1861' he says is $20. the others $8. each"; see M. A. De Wolfe Howe, ed., New Letters of James Russell Lowell (New York: Harper, 1932), 102. On October 10, 1861, the editors of the Atlantic Monthly declined "the three poems with which you have favored us, but which we could not possibly use before their interest,—which is of the present,—would have passed" (Charles E. Feinberg Collection; Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden [1906-1996], 9 vols., 2:213). When Horace Traubel asked Whitman in 1888 for the titles of these poems, he replied: "I don't just remember: I do remember that the idea that their interest was of the present struck me as being a bit odd: I always have written with something more than a simply contemporary perspective" (2:213). "1861" appeared in Drum-Taps (1865).  (Back)

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