Edmund Clarence Stedman to Walt Whitman, 25 October 1888
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44 East 26th st.
New York,
Oct. 25th. 1888
Dear Walt,
Your seasons outlast mine. Your book,1 a gift always to be handed down & treasured
by my clan, reached me on my 55th birthday, and made me wonder that your November
Boughs still hang so rich with color, while my October Leaves are already pale and
wilted.—I am very 
loc_gt.00090.jpg grateful for your rememberance, & touched by it withal. In
many respects this collection (so strikingly & fittingly put up) is one of the
most significant—as it is the most various—of your enduring works.
Rest tranquil, as you ever are, in the ripeness of your harvest & fame,—well assured that, whether your pilgrimage is still to be long or brief, you "shall
not wholly die".—I am always more and more your reader, and
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Correspondent:
Edmund Clarence Stedman
(1833–1908) was a man of diverse talents. He edited for a year the Mountain County Herald at Winsted, Connecticut, wrote
"Honest Abe of the West," presumably Lincoln's first campaign song, and served
as correspondent of the New York World from 1860 to 1862.
In 1862 and 1863 he was a private secretary in the Attorney General's office
until he entered the firm of Samuel Hallett and Company in September, 1863. The
next year he opened his own brokerage office. He published many volumes of poems
and was an indefatigable compiler of anthologies, among which were Poets of America, 2 vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1885) and A Library of American Literature from the Earliest
Settlement to the Present Time, 11 vols. (New York: C. L. Webster,
1889–90). For more, see Donald Yannella, "Stedman, Edmund Clarence (1833–1908)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998).
Notes
- 1. Whitman's November Boughs was published in October 1888 by Philadelphia publisher David McKay. For more information on the book, see James E. Barcus Jr., "November Boughs [1888]," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]