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Walt Whitman to William Sloane Kennedy, 23 June [1886]

Yours of 21st rec'd—acknowledging mine containing note of introduction to Symonds. I suppose you rec'd the big MS of yours,1 (concordance of criticisms &c)—I returned some ten days ago—but you havn't acknowledged it—all right & satisfactory the way you propose. Take your time, & follow out & fulfil what the spirit moves you to make. I will authenticate statistics &c—

W W

When you address me, always write the New Jersey out in full on envelope. I am not at all afraid of my handwriting appearing on the printer's copy—


Correspondent:
William Sloane Kennedy (1850–1929) was on the staff of the Philadelphia American and the Boston Transcript; he also published biographies of Longfellow, Holmes, and Whittier (Dictionary of American Biography [New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1933], 336–337). Apparently Kennedy called on the poet for the first time on November 21, 1880 (William Sloane Kennedy, Reminiscences of Walt Whitman [London: Alexander Gardener, 1896], 1). Though Kennedy was to become a fierce defender of Whitman, in his first published article he admitted reservations about the "coarse indecencies of language" and protested that Whitman's ideal of democracy was "too coarse and crude"; see The Californian, 3 (February 1881), 149–158. For more about Kennedy, see Katherine Reagan, "Kennedy, William Sloane (1850–1929)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998).


Notes

  • 1. This manuscript was the first of several drafts of what became two books, Reminiscences of Walt Whitman (London: Alexander Gardner, 1896) and The Fight of a Book for the World (West Yarmouth, Massachusetts: The Stonecroft Press, 1926). [back]
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