Content:
This manuscript scrap might be part of the missing page 8 of another manuscript by
Whitman, "A Visit to the
Opera," held at the
Huntington Library
. These and other manuscripts about opera singing bear an obvious relationship with the article "The Opera," published in
Life Illustrated
on November 10, 1855, although the details of the relationship are unclear. For a description of the intricacies of these various manuscripts, see Edward Grier,
Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts
(New York: New York University Press, 1984) 1:388-398. The manuscript is pasted down, making the verso inaccessible.
Content:
This item appears to be a fragmentary, earlier draft of "A Visit to the Opera," a manuscript article now at
Huntington Library
in San Marino, California. No published version of the article has been found, though both manuscripts bear some similarities with a piece that Whitman published in
Life Illustrated
on November 10, 1855, entitled "The Opera." Edward Grier, in his discussion of these and other related manuscripts, speculates that the manuscripts represent a revision of the published article, which Whitman perhaps submitted for publication sometime after late 1858. (See
Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts
[New York: New York University Press, 1984] 1:388-397.)
Content:
A relatively clean draft of a journalistic piece, entitled "A Visit to the Opera." No published version in this form has been found, though the draft bears many similarities to "The Opera," an article published in the November 10, 1855 issue of
Life Illustrated.
It is likely that the present draft represents an early stage in the composition of the published article, but it is also possible that it was created later, as a revision intended for publication in a different periodical. Whitman has numbered the pages, although pages 8 and 9 are missing. The draft is signed "Mose Velsor, of Brooklyn," one of Whitman's commonly-used pseudonyms. For more discussion of this draft's relation to "The Opera" and to several other manuscripts, see Edward Grier,
Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts
(New York: New York University Press, 1984) 1:388-397.
