Title: Walt Whitman to John Burroughs, 27 February [1877]
Date: February 27, 1877
Whitman Archive ID: uva.00383
Source: Papers of Walt Whitman (MSS 3829), Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, Albert H. Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia . The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 3:78-9. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Alicia Bones, Grace Thomas, Eder Jaramillo, Nicole Gray, and Kenneth Price
Camden
Tuesday night
Feb 27
I have gone over the chapters—got quite in the spirit of them—added & suggested a few lines or words here & there—and pruned a few passages, even pages, remorselessly.1 I like them all—they are very living—the "Beauty" chapter I think especially fine.2
Do you say the final chapter is already in print? the one about me? If so, send me the proof, which I will return by next mail. I am feeling quite well for me.
WW
1. For Walt Whitman's emendations in Burroughs's manuscript, see the letter from Walt Whitman to John Burroughs on January 24, 1877. [back]
2. "Before Beauty" is the fifth chapter of Burroughs's Birds and Poets (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1877). [back]