Title: Walt Whitman to General James Grant Wilson, 21 May 1879
Date: May 21, 1879
Whitman Archive ID: med.00632
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, 1964), 3:154. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Alicia Bones, Grace Thomas, Eder Jaramillo, Nicole Gray, and Elizabeth Lorang
New York
May 21, 1879
[Walt Whitman thanked Wilson for two books, one a gift, the other to be returned; the latter request Whitman would comply with after his return to Camden.]1
Correspondent:
General James Grant
Wilson (see the letter from Whitman to Wilson of May 21,
1879) was an editor, author, and bookseller. He was a Brevet Brigadier
General in the Civil War; later, he served as President of the New York
Genealogical and Biographical Society and as an editor for Appleton's. He was a frequent contributor to periodicals, and he wrote
or edited numerous works, including Bryant and His
Friends (1886), a four-volume Memorial History of New
York (1892–1893), and a biography titled Life
of Fitz-Green Halleck (1869). For more information on Wilson and a more
complete list of his principal works, see "General James Grant Wilson," Makers of New York: An Historical Work Giving Portraits and
Sketches of the Most Eminent Citizens of New York, edited by Charles
Morris (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1894), 103.
1. The date and summary of the letter are drawn from a catalog put out by Anderson Galleries for a sale on December 8, 1927. The location of this manuscript is presently unknown. [back]