Benjamin O. Flower to Walt Whitman, 2 December 1890

Correspondent:
Benjamin Orange Flower (1858–1918) was an American journalist and reform writer. Born in Illinois to Rev. Alfred Flower (1822–1907) and Elizabeth Orange (1821–1896), Flower studied for a few years at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, in hopes of pursuing a religious vocation like his father. Flower left university after a change of religion and took up journalism, founding The American Spectator in 1886, a magazine succeeded by The Arena three years later. The magazine advocated social reform movements including socialism, prohibition, and trade unionism, and published work from authors Stephen Crane, Hamiln Garland, and Upton Sinclair. After The Arena ceased publication in 1909, Flower began the Twentieth-Century Magazine that ran until 1911. His essays from The Arena were gathered in several volumes, including Civilization's Inferno; or, Studies in the Social Cellar (Boston: Arena Publishing Co., 1893) and Persons, Places and Ideas: Miscellaneous Essays (Boston: Arena Publishing Co., 1896). He is also author of Christian Science as a Religious Belief and a Therapeutic Agent (Boston: Twentieth Century Co., 1910) and Progressive Men, Women, and Movements of the Past Twenty-Five Years (Boston: The Arena, 1914). For more information, see Allen J. Matusow, "The Mind of B. O. Flower," The New England Quarterly 34.4 (December 1961), 492–509.