Life & Letters

Correspondence

About this Item

Title: Walt Whitman to Aleck, 13 May [1885]

Date: May 13, 1885

Whitman Archive ID: loc.07000

Source: The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, 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.

Editorial note: The annotation, "(1885)," is in an unknown hand.

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



page image
image 1
page image
image 2


Wednesday Evn'g
May 13

Aleck dear boy I cannot find "Locusts & Wild Honey" this moment—but let me lend you another of John Burroughs's1 books—(thought by some to be his best.)—"Birds and Poets"—hope it will please you & your mother and sister.

Your friend
W W

Aleck boy here is a copy slip of my little new poem just out in Harpers' Weekly of May 16.2


Correspondent:
As yet we have no information about this correspondent.

Notes:

1. The naturalist John Burroughs (1837–1921) met Whitman on the streets of Washington, D.C., in 1864. After returning to Brooklyn in 1864, Whitman commenced what was to become a decades-long correspondence with Burroughs. Burroughs was magnetically drawn to Whitman. However, the correspondence between the two men is, as Burroughs acknowledged, curiously "matter-of-fact." Burroughs would write several books involving or devoted to Whitman's work: Notes on Walt Whitman, as Poet and Person (1867), Birds and Poets (1877), Whitman, A Study (1896), and Accepting the Universe (1924). For more on Whitman's relationship with Burroughs, see Carmine Sarracino, "Burroughs, John [1837–1921] and Ursula [1836–1917]," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]

2. Whitman's poem "As One by One Withdraw the Lofty Actors" (later "Death of General Grant") appeared in Harper's Weekly on May 16. [back]


Comments?

Published Works | In Whitman's Hand | Life & Letters | Commentary | Resources | Pictures & Sound

Support the Archive | About the Archive

Distributed under a Creative Commons License. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price, editors.