Title: Walt Whitman to Sylvester Baxter, 9 June 1885
Date: June 9, 1885
Whitman Archive ID: nyp.00541
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), 3:391–392. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Stefan Schöberlein and Kyle Barton
328 Mickle Street
Camden New Jersey
June 9 '85
My dear Baxter
I wonder if you could use this in the Outing? The price would be $121—I am ab't as usual of late years—I rec'd your kind note some months since—
Walt Whitman
Correspondent:
Sylvester Baxter (1850–1927)
was on the staff of the Boston Herald. Apparently he met
Whitman for the first time when the poet delivered his Lincoln address in Boston
in April, 1881; see Rufus A. Coleman, "Whitman and Trowbridge," PMLA 63 (1948), 268. Baxter wrote many newspaper columns
in praise of Whitman's writings, and in 1886 attempted to obtain a pension for
the poet. For more, see Christopher O. Griffin, "Baxter, Sylvester [1850–1927]," Walt Whitman:
An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998).
1. On June 7 Whitman sent to Harper's Monthly "The Voice of the Rain," which was returned to him by Alden, the editor, on the following day (June 8, 1885). It appeared in Outing, "An Illustrated Monthly Magazine of Recreation," in August. [back]