an ardent temperament | Whitman Archive

Whitman Archive Title: an ardent temperament
Whitman Archive ID: loc.06025
Repository: Catalog of the Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts in The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839-1919, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Box: OV 11
Folder: 1888, "Elias Hicks"
Series: Oversize
Date: between 1858 and 1888
Genre: prose
Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
View Images: 1 | 2
Content: Two manuscript leaves pasted to a backing scrap to create a continuous inscribed surface. The notes here about Elias Hicks's early life probably contributed to Whitman's 1888 essay "Notes (such as they are) founded on Elias Hicks," first published in November Boughs and later reprinted in Complete Prose Works (1892). Whitman planned to write an essay about Elias Hicks for many years. While finishing preparations for the printing of November Boughs, Whitman told Horace Traubel, "Some of these bits were written as many as thirty years ago. Some of them I have written within the past year. They are a miscellaneous lot but they all belong in the same stream." (See Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, 2: 42.) The present manuscript is stored together with many other manuscripts on the topics of Elias Hicks and Quakerism. Those that directly contributed to the published essay are described separately. Those whose relationship to the published essay are unclear are not included at this stage of our work.