The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to the Editors of The Critic, 16 January 1891
Date: January 16, 1891
Whitman Archive ID: med.00934
Source: The location of this manuscript is unknown. Miller derives his transcription from a transcript of the letter that was published in The Critic 15 (January 24, 1891), 47. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 5:152. 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, Amanda J. Axley, Alex Ashland, and Stephanie Blalock
Am having an extra bad spell these days. May blow over—may not. Best respects to New York friends.
Correspondent:
The editor of the Critic from 1881 to 1906 was Jeannette Leonard Gilder
(1849–1916), who wrote that "one of the things of which I am most proud is
that the Critic was the first publication of its class to
invite Walt Whitman to contribute to its pages" (Charles N. Elliot, Walt Whitman as Man, Poet, and Friend [Boston: Richard G.
Badger, The Gorham Press, 1915], 97). She was assisted in her editorial work by
her brother Joseph Benson Gilder (1858–1936). For more information, see
Susan L. Roberson, "Gilder, Jeannette L. (1849–1916)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998).