The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Edward Dowden, 22 August 1871
Date: August 22, 1871
Whitman Archive ID: loc.01488
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 created by Whitman Archive staff and/or were derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller, 6 vols. (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), and supplemented or updated by Whitman Archive staff.
Contributors to digital file: Alex Kinnaman, Jonathan Y. Cheng, Elizabeth Lorang, Nima Najafi Kianfar, Marie Ernster, Cristin Noonan, Paige Wilkinson, and Stephanie Blalock
 image 1 |  image 2 |  image 3 |  image 4 |
Washington D.C.
Aug 22, 1871.
Dear Mr. Dowden,
I have received your kind letter,1 & your review in the Westminster,2 & thank you heartily. I wish to write you at more length, & may do so before long. I take real comfort in the thought that I have such friends in Ireland, including yourself. I wish to hear more of Mr. Tyrrell,3 whom you speak of.
Walt Whitman
Correspondent:
Edward Dowden (1843–1913), professor of
English literature at the University of Dublin, was one of the first to
critically appreciate Whitman's poetry, particularly abroad, and was primarily
responsible for Whitman's popularity among students in Dublin. In July 1871,
Dowden penned a glowing review of Whitman's work in the Westminster Review entitled "The Poetry of Democracy: Walt Whitman," in which Dowden described
Whitman as "a man unlike any of his predecessors. . . . Bard of America, and
Bard of democracy." In 1888, Whitman observed to Traubel: "Dowden is a book-man:
but he is also and more particularly a man-man: I guess that is where we
connect" (Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden,
Sunday, June 10, 1888, 299). For more, see Philip W. Leon, "Dowden, Edward (1843–1913)," Walt Whitman: An
Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998).
Notes:
1. This letter has not been located. [back]
2. See "The Poetry of Democracy: Walt Whitman," The Westminster Review 96 (July 1871): 33–68. [back]
3. Robert Yelverton Tyrrell (alternately Tyrell) (1844–1914), a fellow of Trinity College and "an excellent Greek scholar," delivered a public lecture on Walt Whitman's poetry in 1871; see Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Thursday, May 10, 1888 and Monday, May 28, 1888. [back]