The village of Jericho | Whitman Archive

Whitman Archive Title: The village of Jericho
Whitman Archive ID: loc.06029
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: This one-page prose draft regarding the birthplace of Elias Hicks was likely one of the manuscripts from which Whitman fashioned his 1888 essay "Notes (such as they are) founded on Elias Hicks," first published in November Boughs and later reprinted in Complete Prose Works (1892). The reference to Elias Hicks's daughter Martha Hicks Aldrich as "still living" suggests that Whitman began writing this manuscript before 1862, the year of Martha's death. The reference, in the revision of this passage, to her death "a year or two ago," "about 1863," would seem to indicate that at least that portion of the manuscript was written around 1865. 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.