Life & Letters

Correspondence

About this Item

Title: Walt Whitman to the Editor of the New York Daily Graphic, 16 December [1874]

Date: December 16, 1874

Whitman Archive ID: med.00433

Source: The location of the original manuscript is unknown. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 2:318. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.

Contributors to digital file: Janel Cayer, Kenneth M. Price, Elizabeth Lorang, Kathryn Kruger, Zachary King, and Eric Conrad




Camden, N.J.,
December 16.

Your notes1 inviting me to write about Spiritualism reached me during a late severe spell of illness, which will account for their not being answered at the time. I thank you for your courtesy, but I am neither disposed nor able to write anything about this so-called Spiritualism. (It seems to me nearly altogether a poor, cheap, crude humbug.)


Walt Whitman


Notes:

1. When this letter was printed on December 19, 1874, the newspaper item stated that Whitman had been sent a circular and an "accompanying letter." The Daily Graphic had printed in other issues comments (mostly sympathetic) on the subject. This letter was discovered by Professor Harold W. Blodgett. [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.