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Literary Scandal

About This Item

  • Title: Literary Scandal
  • Date: 30 July 1858
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: per.00880
  • Source: Brooklyn Daily Times, 30 July 1858: 2. Our transcription is based on a digital image of a microfilm scan of the original issue. Microfilm of original issue held at Pennsylvania State University Libraries. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the journalism, see our statement of editorial policy.
  • Editorial note: This piece is unsigned, as was the case for most of Whitman's journalism. However, this editorial is part of a series of texts that deal with a coherent theme that has been identified by the Whitman Archive journalism team as likely authored by Whitman. This decision is based on a combination of historical and (auto)biographical accounts, similarity to contemporary Whitman writings, a history of scholarly attribution, extant clippings retained by Whitman, computational stylometric analysis, and, in some cases, manuscript evidence in Whitman’s hand.
  • Contributors to digital file: Kaylen Michaelis Brandi Faulkner Stefan Schöberlein Karie Cobb
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Literary Scandal." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 17 July 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: per.00880.xml (TEI)
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LITERARY SCANDAL.—

The embarrassments of authors, both domestic and pecuniary, are just now the topic of conversation. In France we have Lamartine1 in the attitude of a pauper, invoking pecuniary aid by private or national subscriptions to discharge his liabilities. In England we have the Dickens2 scandal and the Bulwer3 scandal, in both of which cases the celebrated novelists do not appear in any very enviable light.4 The literati, just now, are “under the weather.”

Notes:

1. Alphonse de Lamartine (1790–1869) was a French writer. [back]

2. Charles Dickens (1812–1870) was a famous English novelist, whose impact on anglophone culture during the Victorian age can hardly be overestimated. Whitman was an avid Dickens reader and his own fiction shows a debt to "Boz" that Whitman himself readily acknowledged in his early journalism. For more information, see Vickie L. Taft, "Dickens, Charles (1812–1870)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]

3. Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803–1873), was an English writer and politician. His novel The Caxtons: A Family Picture (1849) was a breakout hit at the time. Whitman once accused Lytton of plagiarizing a book titled Zicci, stating it was the exact same as the novel Zanoni. Both novels, however, were written by Lytton. Whitman described the controversy in a number of Aurora editorials. See "The Great Bamboozle!—A Plot Discovered!" (March 28, 1842), and "More Humbug" (April 4, 1842). [back]

4.  [back]

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