The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Hezekiah Butterworth, 2 January 1891
Date: January 2, 1891
Whitman Archive ID: loc.01191
Source: The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Transcribed from digital images or a microfilm reproduction of the original item. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Editorial note: The annotation, "Whitman | Poet | Mr. Hezekiah Butterworth | ed of Youth's Companion," is in an unknown hand.
Contributors to digital file: Cristin Noonan, Amanda J. Axley, Marie Ernster, and Stephanie Blalock
 image 1 |  image 2 |
Jan: 2 '91
Dear Mr B—
Can you use this in the Companion1?—The price is $8 and a dozen numbers of the paper containing it2—And I reserve the right of printing in future book—
Very respectfully
Walt Whitman
328 Mickle Street
Camden New Jersey
Correspondent:
Hezekiah Butterworth
(1839–1905) was an American author, educator, and poet. From 1870 to 1894,
he was on the staff of the Youth's Companion, a magazine
he had frequently contributed to prior to his employment. He is the author of
more than seventy books, including The Story of the Hymns
(New York: American Tract Society, 1875), Young Folk's History
of Boston (Boston: Estes and Lauriat, 1881), and the Zigzag Journeys, a series of seventeen travelogue adventures published
by Estes and Lauriat. For more information, see Butterworth's obituary,
"Hezekiah Butterworth Dead" in the Fall River Globe
(September 6 1905), 2.
Notes:
1. The Youth's Companion, a weekly magazine for families and children, was founded by Nathaniel Willis in 1827. During its more than one-hundred-year run, the magazine published contributions by Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. For more on the Youth's Companion, see Susan Belasco, Youth's Companion. [back]
2. Whitman is likely referring to his poem "Ship Ahoy!," which was published in the Youth's Companion on March 12, 1891. [back]