Life & Letters

Correspondence

About this Item

Title: Henry M. Alden to Walt Whitman, 12 May 1885

Date: May 12, 1885

Whitman Archive ID: loc.05931

Source: The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. The transcription presented here is derived from Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden (Boston: Small, Maynard, 1906), 1:61. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.

Contributors to digital file: Alex Kinnaman, Stefan Schöberlein, Ian Faith, Kyle Barton, and Nicole Gray




Harper & Brothers' Editorial Rooms,
Franklin Square, New York,
May 12, 1885.

My dear Whitman,

I have your kind favor of the 11th with the enclosed poem—or series of poems, rather. It does not seem to me that Fancies at the Navesink will make a favorable impression upon our readers—though they might upon a select few. I must therefore return them.1

With thanks,
Sincerely yours,
H. M. Alden.


Correspondent:
Henry Mills Alden (1836–1919) was managing editor of Harper's Weekly from 1863 to 1869 and editor of Harper's Monthly Magazine from 1869 until his death.

Notes:

1. Whitman's letter to Alden appears to be lost. Whitman's poem-grouping "Fancies at Navesink" was published in The Nineteenth Century 18 (August 1885), 234–237. [back]


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