Skip to main content

Walt Whitman to the Editor of The North American Review, 12 May 1882

 loc.02913.001_large.jpg Dear Sir

Yours of yesterday rec'd—I could send the MS of Carlyle from an American Point of View by the 20th or 21st a week from now1—It would make about nine or ten pages—

—What I said about its being "a candidate for the place of leading paper" &c—was meant to be left entirely to the editorial exigencies & judgment—no condition at all—

Walt Whitman  loc.02913.002_large.jpg

Notes

  • 1. Whitman sent the article on May 18, and it was returned to him (Whitman's Commonplace Book, Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). It is printed in Specimen Days, ed. Floyd Stovall (New York: New York University Press, 1963), 254–262. The North American Review also rejected "The Prairies in Poetry" which the poet submitted on May 4 and for which he asked $50 (Whitman's Commonplace Book). This article included a number of sections in Specimen Days (219–224; and see Stovall's note, 219n). [back]
Back to top