The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to the Editor, Century Illustrated Monthly Review, [(?) September 1888]
Date: [September (?) 1888]
Whitman Archive ID: med.00833
Source: The location of this letter is unknown. Miller derived his transcription from the manuscript of the letter that was then a part of the William E. Barton Estate. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 4:216. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Ryan Furlong, Ian Faith, Caterina Bernardini, and Stephanie Blalock
Camden
[09(?).(?).1888]
follow copy, punctuation &c—After reading first proof by copy, & correcting, please send me a good second proof.1 I send copy with it—Address Walt Whitman 328 Mickle street, Camden, New Jersey.
Walt Whitman
Correspondent:
The editor of The
Century at this time was Richard Watson Gilder (1844–1909).
Whitman had met Gilder for the first time in 1877 at John H. Johnston's (Gay
Wilson Allen, The Solitary Singer [New York: New York
University Press, 1955], 482), and considered Gilder one of the "always sane men
in the general madness" of "that New York art delirium" (Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Sunday, August 5, 1888). For more about Gilder, see Susan L.
Roberson, "Gilder, Richard Watson (1844–1909)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998).
Notes:
1. Whitman's poem, "Old Age's Lambent Peaks," was published in the September 1888 issue of The Century. He may be referring to proofs of this poem. [back]