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Walt Whitman to Jeannette L. Gilder, 27 May [1884]

Private My dear friend

If convenient & you can print the following, just as it is,1 put in & oblige your friend

Walt Whitman

Correspondent:
Jeannette Leonard Gilder (1849–1916) helped her brother, Richard Watson Gilder (1844–1909), edit Scribner's Monthly and then, with another brother, Joseph Benson Gilder (1858–1936), co-edited the Critic (which she co-founded in 1881). For more, see Susan L. Roberson, "Gilder, Jeannette L. (1849–1916)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998).


Notes

  • 1. The Critic printed on May 31 "A Fabulous Episode," in which Whitman, writing in the third person, repudiated an anecdote related by James Berry Bensel in the Lynn Saturday Union of May 24: when Whitman allegedly asked Longfellow for permission to dedicate to him the first edition of Leaves of Grass, the latter was ready to consent if certain passages were excised. The notice in the Lynn newspaper was sent to Whitman by S. W. Foss on May 26, 1884. [back]
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