Camden
May 31 '83
The publisher having placed a few advance copies in paper of Dr Bucke's WW at my
disposal I send you one1—The book will be pub: here & in London in ab't ten days—May-be you could find a market (in some remunerative
quarter) for some early notices of same—yours of 27th rec'd —
I don't think you appreciate the importance of that article of yours, (statement,
position, signal for advance, &c) in the Critic. It
entails on you deep responsibilities, & great wariness & determination in
keeping it up. I mean exactly what I said in my last.2
W W
Notes
- 1. Kennedy's review of
Bucke's study appeared in the Boston Globe on June 10.
Whitman sent "Press copies" to the Philadelphia Press, in
which a review appeared on May 27; to The Critic, where
it was reviewed on June 9; to the Boston Herald (to
Sylvester Baxter), in which a review was printed on May 27; to the New York Evening Post; and to the New York Tribune (Notebook, Yale; and Bucke's Scrapbook, Charles E. Feinberg
Collection, Library of Congress, Washington D.C.). The Camden County Courier noticed the book on June 2, the New York Times on July 1 (see the letter from Whitman to William
D. O'Connor of July 20, 1883), and The Nation on July 26 (see the letter from Whitman to
O'Connor of September 17, 1883). Edward Dowden
published a review in The Academy on September 8 (see the
letter from Whitman to John Burroughs of October
1883). Of his book Bucke wrote to O'Connor on February 26: "I am glad
to . . . go to battle in a good cause, but I am not exultant about it, I have
made up my mind to be attacked in every conceivable way, to be called an idiot,
a lunatic, and all the rest of it, and I am prepared to stand it all" (The
Library of Congress, Washington D.C.). [back]
- 2. See the letter from
Whitman to William Sloane Kennedy of May 26,
1883. [back]