The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Executive Committee Contemporary Club, 15 February 1888
Date: February 15, 1888
Whitman Archive ID: loc.01311
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.
Notes for this letter were derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller, 6 vols. (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), and supplemented, updated, or created by Whitman Archive staff as appropriate.
Contributors to digital file: Ryan Furlong, Ian Faith, Stefan Schöberlein, and Stephanie Blalock
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Feb: 15 '881
To Executive Committee Contemporary Club:
I propose the name of Thomas B Harned,2 Counsellor at Law, of this city, for membership in the club.
Walt Whitman
Camden
NJ
Feb 15 '88
Correspondent:
The Contemporary Club was a
Philadelphia literary circle established in 1886 by the essayist Agnes Repplier.
In 1887, Whitman gave a reading of "The Mystic Trumpeter" and "A Voice from the
Sea" at the club.
Notes:
1. This letter is composed of a thinner material than Whitman normally writes on during this period. Thus, the ink on the recto seeps through to the verso side. [back]
2. Thomas Biggs Harned (1851–1921) was one of Whitman's literary executors. Harned was a lawyer in Philadelphia and, having married Augusta Anna Traubel (1856–1914), was Horace Traubel's brother-in-law. For more on him, see Dena Mattausch, "Harned, Thomas Biggs (1851–1921)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). For more on his relationship with Whitman, see Thomas Biggs Harned, Memoirs of Thomas B. Harned, Walt Whitman's Friend and Literary Executor, ed. Peter Van Egmond (Hartford: Transcendental Books, 1972). [back]