Fred S. Ryman to Walt Whitman, 14 May 1889
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Boston
May 14 1889
Dear Mr Whitman:—
I see that Mr. W. D. O'Connor1 is dead. Can you tell me the date & place of his birth & of his death also where I could get a sketch of his life.
Very sincerely yours Fred S Ryman 42 Bradford St.
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Correspondent:
Frederick Shelley Ryman
(1858–1930) was a Pennsylvania-born poet, book collector, and diarist. His
poems frequently appeared in newspapers and magazines, and he was once lauded as
"the Byron of America" and "Poet of the Catskills" (The Elmira
Tidings 4.28 [May 17, 1885], 5). Ryman's forty-four volume diary,
currently housed at the Massachusetts Historical Society, explicitly describes
his intimacy with men and women between 1880 and 1929, and has been frequently
referenced in studies on sexuality in the nineteenth century. John D'Emilio and
Estelle B. Freedman write that Ryman "espoused free-love doctrines, passionately
loved the poetry of Walt Whitman, and championed women's rights and equal
employment" (Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in
America, Third edition [Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press,
2012], 109).
Notes
- 1. William Douglas O'Connor (1832–1889) was the author of the grand and grandiloquent Whitman pamphlet The Good Gray Poet: A Vindication, published in 1866. For more on Whitman's relationship with O'Connor, see Deshae E. Lott, "O'Connor, William Douglas (1832–1889)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]