George Parsons Lathrop to Walt Whitman, 2 January 1884
loc.03231.001_large.jpg
ans | name signed
80 Washington Sq.
New York
Jan 2/84.
Dear Whitman,
Will you kindly sign your name well up on the enclosed document, close under the print?
We already have about 120 authors in this League,1 many of the best standing & authority. It is meant to take in the whole mass of writers, of every worthy kind, & when we have got these we shall enroll the outside sympathizers, numbering, I hope, thousands. Ultimately, I believe we shall accomplish something.
Faithfully yours G P Lathrop
loc.03231.002_large.jpg
Correspondent:
George Parsons Lathrop
(1851–1898) was an American poet and novelist. He was also the biographer
of his father-in-law, Nathaniel Hawthorne. For more on him, see The Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable
Americans, ed. Rossiter Johnson and John Howard Brown (Boston:
Biographical Society, 1904), 360.
Notes
- 1. Lathrop is likely referring to the American Copyright League, which he had founded in 1883. The secretary of the organization was Robert Underwood Johnson. Aparently, Whitman chose to support the cause, as The Publisher's Weekly of January 26th that year lists him as a "working member" alongside T. W. Higginson, William L. Alden, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and John G. Whittier. On this topic, see also Martin T. Buinicki, "Walt Whitman and the Question of Copyright," American Literary History 15 (Summer 2003): 248–275. [back]