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Walt Whitman to William C. Church and Francis P. Church, 8 February 1870

About This Item

  • Title: Walt Whitman to William C. Church and Francis P. Church, 8 February 1870
  • Date: February 8, 1870
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: prc.00025
  • Source: Private collection of Mrs. Francis Frederic Phillips. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 93. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Walt Whitman to William C. Church and Francis P. Church, 8 February 1870." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 02 November 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: prc.00025.xml (TEI)
Attorney General's Office, Washington. Feb. 8, 1870. W. C., & F. P. Church. My friends:1

I send you a page & a half piece—"A warble for lilac-time"—if available for the April Galaxy. If not, for the May number.2

Yours truly Walt Whitman.

Notes

  • 1. William Conant Church (1836–1917), journalist and publisher, was a correspondent for several New York newspapers until he founded the Army and Navy Journal in 1863. With his brother Francis Pharcellus (1839–1906), he established the Galaxy in 1866. Financial control of the Galaxy passed to Sheldon and Company in 1868, and it was absorbed by the Atlantic Monthly in 1878. William published a biography of his life-long friend Ulysses S. Grant in 1897, and Francis wrote for the New York Sun the unsigned piece "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus." See Edward F. Grier, "Walt Whitman, the Galaxy, and Democratic Vistas," American Literature, 23 (1951–1952), 332–350; Donald N. Bigelow, William Conant Church & "The Army and Navy Journal" (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952); J. R. Pearson, Jr., "Story of a Magazine: New York's Galaxy, 1866–1878," Bulletin of the New York Public Library, 61 (1957), 217–237, 281–302. [back]
  • 2. Whitman's poem appeared in the Galaxy, 9 (May 1870), 686. For the poem as it appeared in the Galaxy, see "A Warble for Lilac-time." [back]
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