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Walt Whitman to William Sloane Kennedy, 17 January 1891

About This Item

  • Title: Walt Whitman to William Sloane Kennedy, 17 January 1891
  • Date: January 17, 1891
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: med.00936
  • Source: The location of this manuscript is unknown. Miller derives his transcription from a partial transcription that was published in the Catalog of Harry A Levinson, December, 1940. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 153. 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 Stephanie Blalock
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Walt Whitman to William Sloane Kennedy, 17 January 1891." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 09 May 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: med.00936.xml (TEI)
Camden, Jan. 17 '91

I seem to be weathering on, appetite middling, digestion ditto, both commendable signs, am sitting here in the old chair. [WW also mentioned Arthur Stedman.1]

Walt W

Correspondent:
William Sloane Kennedy (1850–1929) was on the staff of the Philadelphia American and the Boston Transcript; he also published biographies of Longfellow, Holmes, and Whittier (Dictionary of American Biography [New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1933], 336–337). Apparently Kennedy called on the poet for the first time on November 21, 1880 (William Sloane Kennedy, Reminiscences of Walt Whitman [London: Alexander Gardener, 1896], 1). Though Kennedy was to become a fierce defender of Whitman, in his first published article he admitted reservations about the "coarse indecencies of language" and protested that Whitman's ideal of democracy was "too coarse and crude"; see The Californian, 3 (February 1881), 149–158. For more about Kennedy, see Katherine Reagan, "Kennedy, William Sloane (1850–1929)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998).

Notes

  • 1. Arthur Stedman (1859–1908) was the son of the prominent critic, editor, and poet Edmund Clarence Stedman. Arthur was an editor at Mark Twain's publishing house, Charles L. Webster. In 1892, he brought out his own editions of Whitman's Selected Poems and a selection of prose writings entitled Autobiographia. [back]
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