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Walt Whitman to Karl Knortz, 14 June 1886

Dear Sir

Yours rec'd​ & I send you a few names I would like to have the address forwarded to.2 I am ab't as usual in health. I wish you to keep me posted of any thing that occurs—& I will you.

Walt Whitman

  • Edward Carpenter, Millthorpe, near Chesterfield, England
  • W S Kennedy, Belmont, Mass:
  • T W Rolleston, Editor University Magazine3 Dublin Ireland
  • Wm M Rossetti, 5 Endsleigh Gardens, Euston Square, London n w
  • England
  • (Dante Rossetti is dead)
  • Mrs: B F C Costelloe, 40 Grosvenor Road, Westminster, London S W
  • England
  • Ernest Rhys, 59 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, London S W England
  • J Addington Symonds, Davos Platz, Graubünden Switzerland
  • E C Stedman 45 E 30th St New York City
  • Prof: Edward Dowden, Temple Road, Winstead, Rathmines Dublin
  • Ireland

Correspondent:
Karl Knortz (1841–1918) was born in Prussia and came to the U.S. in 1863. He was the author of many books and articles on German-American affairs and was superintendent of German instruction in Evansville, Ind., from 1892 to 1905. See The American-German Review 13 (December 1946), 27–30. His first published criticism of Whitman appeared in the New York Staats-Zeitung Sonntagsblatt on December 17, 1882, and he worked with Thomas W. H. Rolleston on the first book-length translation of Whitman's poetry, published as Grashalme in 1889. For more information about Knortz, see Walter Grünzweig, "Knortz, Karl (1841–1918)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998).


Notes

  • 1. This letter is addressed: Dr Carl Knortz | 540 East 155th Street | New York City. It is postmarked: Camden | Jun | 14 | (?)PM | (?) | N.J. [back]
  • 2. Knortz's lecture: Walt Whitman. Vortrag gehalten im Deutschen Gesellig-Wissenschaftlichen Verein von New York am 24. März 1886 (1886). [back]
  • 3. On August 4, 1885, Rolleston had informed Whitman that he was the editor of the Dublin University Review, which "aims at introducing Nationalist thought amongst the upper classes in Ireland." [back]
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