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Walt Whitman to Joseph B. Gilder, 18 February [1885]

About This Item

  • Title: Walt Whitman to Joseph B. Gilder, 18 February [1885]
  • Date: February 18, 1885
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • 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 created by Whitman Archive staff and/or were derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller, 6 vols. (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), and supplemented or updated by Whitman Archive staff.
  • Contributors to digital file: Stefan Schöberlein Kyle Barton
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Walt Whitman to Joseph B. Gilder, 18 February [1885]." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 09 May 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: owu.00010.xml (TEI)
#15 J.B Gilder '85  owu.00010.001_large.jpg 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  owu.00010.002_large.jpg

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]
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