The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: H. S. Kneedler to Walt Whitman, 23 April 1882
Date: April 23, 1882
Whitman Archive ID: loc.05558
Source: The Thomas Biggs Harned Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1842–1937, 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.
Contributors to digital file: Stefan Schöberlein, Blake Bronson-Bartlett, and Nicole Gray
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H. S. KNEEDLER,
P.O. BOX 370
IOWA CITY, IOWA.
Iowa City, Ia.
4/23, 1882.
Honored Sir—
But a few moments ago in an unknown country paper a paragraph with a "fling" at your poetry attracted my attention, and under the impulse of the moment, with an undefined purpose of assuring you of the love and reverence in which you are held by thousands, I took up my pen.
If the recognition of you has not been as demonstrative as that awarded to some others it is because your thought is in advance of your generation, and it will be the privelege of another age to award what this shortsighted one has neglected. Let one who sincerely reverences you as a man and admires you as a poet thank you for the example of your life and the heretage of song you will leave to your race.
Respectfully,
H. S. Kneedler.