The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Joseph M. Stoddart, 24 April 1890
Date: April 24, 1890
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00956
Source: Trent Collection of Whitmaniana, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 5:41. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Andrew David King, Cristin Noonan, Breanna Himschoot, and Stephanie Blalock
328 Mickle street
Camden New Jersey
April 24 '90
My dear Stoddart1
Can you use this in the magazine? It is intended to make one page full & square—& I shall require to see a proof beforehand—(that is indispensable.) The price is $60 & a dozen copies of the magazine number. I reserve the right of printing in future book.
Respectfully &c:
Walt Whitman
If necessary I will contract or expand it (in proof) to make the fair page—
Correspondent:
Joseph Marshall Stoddart
(1845–1921) published Stoddart's Encyclopaedia
America, established Stoddart's Review in 1880,
which was merged with The American in 1882, and became
the editor of Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in 1886. On
January 11, 1882, Whitman received an
invitation from Stoddart through J. E. Wainer, one of his associates, to dine
with Oscar Wilde on January 14 (Clara Barrus, Whitman and
Burroughs—Comrades [Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1931],
235n).
Notes:
1. Joseph M. Stoddart (1845–1921) came to see Whitman on April 21, "inviting me to write for Lippincott's magazine" (Whitman's Commonplace Book, Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). Whitman sent "Old Age Echoes" "(4 pieces, 'sounds of winter,' 'the unexpress'd,' 'to the sunset-breeze' and 'after the argument')." On April 28 he agreed to Stoddart's request that the poems be printed separately (Whitman's Commonplace Book, Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.), and on the following day, April 29, the editor paid Whitman $60. "Old-Age Echoes" was published in March, 1891; "To the Sun-Set Breeze" was in the December, 1890 issue; apparently "After the Argument" was not printed. [back]