Books and Manuscripts

Whitman, Walt
Autograph Note, signed
Camden (New Jersey), May 5, (18)91. Autograph note on postcard, signed by Walt Whitman to his friend and supporter, the biographer and editor, William Sloane Kennedy: "Camden May 5 '91 / Thanks for yrs rec'd this / forenoon--Am pretty sick / yet---was taken out to the / cemetery, (Harleigh) to see if I / was satisfied with the work on my / burial house--entirely so--you will / see it one day--Walt Whitman"; addressed on verso by Whitman, "Sloane Kennedy / Belmont Mass:". Tipped-in to Leaves of Grass (Philadelphia: David McKay, [1900]). Reprint. Publisher's green cloth, stamped in black and in gilt, foot of spine chipped, headcap frayed; top edge gilt, other edges trimmed; gutter split at p. (iii); book-plate of clergyman Minot Osgood Simons on front paste-down. BAL 21452

Less than a year before the poet's death, Walt Whitman writes to his friend and supporter, the biographer and editor, William Sloane Kennedy (1850–1929), recounting a visit to his then-incomplete and self-designed tomb at Harleigh Cemetery in Camden, New Jersey. Born in Brecksville, Ohio, Kennedy was one of Whitman's most devoted admirers and defenders later in the poet's life. He first met Whitman in Philadelphia in 1880 while working on the staff of the American, and until the poet's death, in 1892, they were frequent correspondents. Kennedy penned several essays on Whitman, and in 1896 published Reminiscences of Walt Whitman with Extracts from His Letters and Remarks on His Writings, edited Walt Whitman's Diary in Canada (1904) and, in 1926, published The Fight of a Book for the World: A Companion Volume to "Leaves of Grass."

Provenance
The Estate of G. Franklin Ludington, New York City.