Title: Walt Whitman to William Sloane Kennedy, 24 May 1882
Date: May 24, 1882
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00762
Source: The Trent Collection of Walt Whitman Manuscripts, Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 3:281. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Stefan Schoeberlein, Nima Najafi Kianfar, Eder Jaramillo, and Nicole Gray
Camden New Jersey
May 24 '82
Thanks for the beautiful & opportune book1—just come to hand—I am about as usual in health—
Walt Whitman
1. Kennedy's biography of Longfellow was published in Cambridge, Mass., in 1882. In an undated letter, written in late May or early June, Kennedy referred to the Boston censorship: "I know you are as serene as a mountain, though you are a grand old god, with all your faults. . . . It has taken me three years to get y'r parallax & calculate your dimensions" (Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington D.C.). [back]