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Walt Whitman Signed Letter Re: Shipping his Latest Centennial Edition of "Leaves Of Grass"
Walt Whitman Signed Letter Re: Shipping his Latest Centennial Edition of "Leaves Of Grass"
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Whitman Walt

Walt Whitman Signed Letter Re: Shipping his Latest Centennial Edition of "Leaves Of Grass"

 

One page autographed letter signed, on mailing postcard, 5" x 3." Whitman additional holograph address on verso, postmarked "Oct 26, Camden N.J."  No date but circa 1880. Small ink smudge to address, else fine with light toning.

 

A lovely vibrant autographed letter signed by Whitman responding to a request by W.J. Forbes ordering the 2- volume 1876 Centennial Edition of Leaves of Grass:

 

 "Camden New Jersey Oct 20

Yours recd with Enc. Thanks- I forward the two vols. by mail to-day to the same address as this card. Please notify me by postal soon as they reach you safely. Walt Whitman"

 

In assistance in establishing the date of this letter, we have located one other published letter from Whitman dated 1881 replying to a request for his two Vols Centennial edition for Leaves of Grass.  Additionally, a fragment of Forbes's letter to Whitman enclosing $10 for the 2 vol. Centennial Edition ("would you put your autograph on the fly leaf of each volume") is in the Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, Library of Congress. Whitman apparently cut Forbes's letter into pieces which were then pasted together with pieces from other letters upon which he wrote part of a prose draft titled "Poetry in America-Shakespeare-the Future." The surrounding fragments are dated 1880. 

 

Called America's first "poet of democracy," a name for Whitman which reflected his ability to write in a singularly American character. Among the most influential US poets, often called the "father of free verse," his work was very controversial, particularly "Leaves of Grass" (1855) which was described as obscene for its overt sexuality. He worked as a government clerk and as a volunteer nurse during the Civil War. "Leaves of Grass," published with his own money, was an attempt to reach out to the common person with an American epic. He continued expanding and revising it until his death.

 

There is a distinct contrast between Whitman's idealized notions of the human body as expressed in his literary work and the actual state of his health as it evolved over the course of his life. The many revisions of Leaves of Grass did not so much parallel his decline in health as much as reinforce his original conception of the natural human being as the divine reflection of the cosmos. Over time this idea as an essential theme of his work began to take precedence over others, serving as both his conception of America's unique characteristic as a people and the archetype of his own self-created myth for the model of healthy masculinity.

 

As a consequence, the health-imbued persona of mythic proportions he projected in his work fused with new and various aspects of his self-created image as healer in each newly revised edition of the work. Harold Aspiz believes the first three editions of Leaves of Grass illustrate a merger of what he terms the "fact and invention" of Whitman's self-portrayal as the self-endowed symbol of his own magnificent body. His image as "one of the roughs" in the first edition transforms in the second into a magnetic "folk-evangelist," in the third into a "reincarnated Adam" ready to bear healthy children, and in the fourth into the "healer-camerado." With each new edition, the body of the poet is used less and less as a metaphor for the physical vitality that was integral to his philosophy. By the time of this letter, Whitman was already partially paralyzed.  Whitman spent his last years in Camden, New Jersey. As the end of 1891 approached, he prepared a final edition of "Leaves of Grass", the "Deathbed Edition;" he died in 1892.

 

A phenomenal piece of literary history in spectacular condition.


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