The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Joseph B. Gilder, 18 February [1885]
Date: February 18, 1885
Whitman Archive ID: owu.00010
Source: The Bayley-Whitman Collection, Ohio Wesleyan University,
Delaware, OH. Transcribed from digital images or a microfilm reproduction of the original item. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Notes for this letter were derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller, 6 vols. (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), and supplemented, updated, or created by Whitman Archive staff as appropriate.
Editorial notes: The annotation, "'85," is in the hand of Walt Whitman. The annotations, "#15," and "J.B Gilder," are in an unknown hand.
Contributors to digital file: Stefan Schöberlein and Kyle Barton
 image 1 |  image 2 |
Camden
Feb. 18
My dear J B G
I have no feeling of objection to your substituting a nom de plume in place of Mr Scovel's name1—
Walt Whitman
Correspondent:
Joseph Benson Gilder (1858–1936) was, with his
sister Jeannette Leonard Gilder (1849–1916), co-editor of The Critic, a literary magazine.
Notes:
1. A reference to "Walt Whitman in Camden" which appeared in The Critic on February 28 under the signature of George Selwyn. It was reprinted in Authors at Home, ed. J. L. and J. B. Gilder (1888), and in Critic Pamphlet No. 2 (1898), in which Whitman was cited as the author and a page of the manuscript was reproduced in facsimile. Apparently Whitman's original intention was to use the name of Whitman's friend, the Camden lawyer James Matlack Scovel, as he had done in the article published in the Springfield Republican in 1875 (see the letter from Whitman to Rudolf Schmidt of July 31, 1875). "Selwyn's" account was filled with factual errors. [back]