Content:
A partial draft of Whitman's essay "Shakespeare for America," which was first published in the magazine
Poet-Lore
on September 15, 1890. The piece would later be reprinted in the
Critic
(titled "Shakspere for America") on September 27, 1890, and then included in Whitman's
Good-Bye My Fancy
in 1891 and
Complete Prose Works
in 1892. On the reverse is a letter from John W. Cook, dated 9 February 1890.
Whitman Archive Title: Shakspere for America Manuscript
Content:
A portion of a letter sent by Whitman to the editors of
Poet-Lore
in September 1890. The second half of the letter is now held at Duke University. The majority of the letter was reprinted, nearly verbatim, under the title "Shakespeare for America," in the September 1890 issue of
Poet-Lore
, and was a response to a piece entitled "Walt Whitman's View of Shakespeare," by Jonathan Trumbull, which appeared in the July issue. With a slightly altered title, "Shakspere for America" was later reprinted in
The Critic
on 27 September 1890, as well as in
Good-Bye My Fancy
(1891) and
Complete Prose Works
(1892).
