A journalist and writer of books, pamphlets, and journal articles, under the pseudonym January Searle, Phillips was an early supporter of Whitman. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he received an A.B., although his name does not appear on the list of graduates. After immigrating to America, he was associated with the New York World, the Herald, and the Chicago Tribune, before becoming literary editor of the New York Sun.
Phillips wrote a favorable review of Leaves of Grass for the New York Illustrated News (26 May 1860), reprinted in the Saturday Press (30 June 1860). His laudatory poem, "Letter Impromptu" (1857), written in hexameters, appeared in Leaves of Grass Imprints (1860).
Bibliography
"Phillips, George Searle." The Dictionary of National Biography. 1897. Ed. Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee. Vol. 15. London: Oxford UP, 1937–1938. 1087.
Glicksberg, Charles I. "Walt Whitman and 'January Searle.'" American Notes and Queries 6 (1946): 51–53.
Whitman, Walt. Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts. Ed. Edward F. Grier. Vol. 1. New York: New York UP, 1984.