Title: Walt Whitman to William D. O'Connor, [19 September 1883]
Date: September 19, 1883
Whitman Archive ID: nyp.00500
Source: The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, New York Public Library. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 3:352–353. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Stefan Schoeberlein, Kirsten Clawson, Nima Najafi Kianfar, and Nicole Gray
offered for the Sunday Edition1
about Walt Whitman
Dr Bucke's Book
To the Editor of the Sun
The following answer of mine to an article in the Nation of July 26 having been refused publication by that paper, it is sent to you, not in any controversial spirit, but because the facts I give are of current interest, and should be kept well before the American public, especially the New York portion of it. Washington Sept: 1883
I suggest that you send it to the N. Y. Sun for their Sunday edition—with the preceding note—Dana I think is more or less friendly2—
1. This letter is endorsed: "Answ'd Sept 22/83." It is addressed: Wm D O'Connor | Life Saving Service | Treasury | Washington | D C. It is postmarked: Philadelphia | Pa. | Sep 19 83 | 1 30 PM. [back]
2. Dana, the editor of the New York Sun, who was one of Whitman's early admirers, rejected the article, according to O'Connor's post card of September 24. [back]