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Editor of the New Orleans Picayune to Walt Whitman, 11 January 1887

About This Item

  • Title: Editor of the New Orleans Picayune to Walt Whitman, 11 January 1887
  • Date: January 11, 1887
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: med.00822
  • Source: The location of this manuscript is unknown. It is derived from Whitman's transcription in "New Orleans in 1848," which was published in the New Orleans Picayune on January 25, 1887. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, Prose Works 1892, ed. Floyd Stovall (New York: New York University Press, 1964), 605. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Contributors to digital file: Alex Ashland Ian Faith Stefan Schöberlein Stephanie Blalock
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Editor of the New Orleans Picayune to Walt Whitman, 11 January 1887." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 09 May 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: med.00822.xml (TEI)
New Orleans, Jan. 11, '87.—

We have been informed that when you were younger and less famous than now, you were in New Orleans and perhaps have helped on the Picayune. If you have any remembrance of the Picayune's young days, or of journalism in New Orleans of that era, and would put it in writing (verse or prose) for the Picayune's fiftieth year edition, Jan. 25, we shall be pleased.1

Correspondent:
At the time, Eliza Jane Poitevent Holbrook Nicholson (1843–1896), a Mississippi-born poet and journalist, owned the Picayune.

Notes

  • 1. Whitman wrote an essay, "New Orleans in 1848," that was published in the New Orleans Picayune on January 25, 1887. [back]
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