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James Redpath to Walt Whitman, 6 October 1886

 loc.03293.001_large.jpg To Walt Whitman

What price for Burns article1 answer,2

Jas. Redpath  loc.03293.002_large.jpg

Correspondent:
James Redpath (1833–1891), an antislavery activist, journalist, and longtime friend of Whitman, was the author of The Public Life of Capt. John Brown (Boston: Thayer and Eldridge, 1860), a correspondent for the New York Tribune during the war, and the originator of the "Lyceum" lectures. He met Whitman in Boston in 1860, and he remained an enthusiastic admirer; see Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Friday, January 4, 1889. He concluded his first letter to Whitman on June 25, 1860: "I love you, Walt! A conquering Brigade will ere long march to the music of your barbaric jawp." Redpath became managing editor of The North American Review in 1886. See also Charles F. Horner, The Life of James Redpath and the Development of the Modern Lyceum, (New York: Barse & Hopkins, 1926); John R. McKivigan, Forgotten Firebrand: James Redpath and the Making of Nineteenth-Century America, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008); and J.R. LeMaster, "Redpath, James [1833–1891]," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998).


Notes

  • 1. "Robert Burns" had already appeared in The Critic on December 16, 1882, and Whitman republished it in the North American Review under the title "Robert Burns as Poet and Person" in November 1886. [back]
  • 2. See the letter from Whitman to James Redpath of July 10, 1886. On August 6 Whitman sent Redpath "Robert Burns As Poet and Person," for which he received $70 (Whitman's Commonplace Book, Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). Whitman returned the proof on August 31 (Whitman's Commonplace Book). The essay appeared in The North American Review in November 1886. [back]
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