Whitman seeks to sell a Leaves of Grass poem

In this fine, boldly penned letter, Walt Whitman sends the manuscript of his poem“The Mystic Trumpeter” for possible publication in the January 1872 number of The Galaxy. In a long postscript he observes that he may read the poem at a benefit event, “but it will not detract from the originality of the piece in the Jan. number. I reserve the right of printing in future book[s].” In fact Whitman would include the poem in the final edition of Leaves of Grass (1891).

The Galaxy’s publishers, the brothers W. C. Church and F. P. Church, conceived of their new journal as a competitor to The Atlantic Monthly. They published John Burroughs’s “Notes on Walt Whitman as Poet and Person” in December 1866. Spurred on by the article’s reception and by Whitman’s growing reputation, the Churches proposed that Whitman himself contribute a poem on the theme of “harvest.” The poet’s “A Carol of Harvest for 1867” appeared in the September 1867 number. Whitman continued to submit poems and essays to the Galaxy, but his success rate declined. His last piece in the magazine appeared in the June 1871 number. In the end the Church brothers declined to buy “The Mystic Trumpeter,” and it appeared in The Kansas Magazine for February 1872.

“Whitman’s position as a Galaxy author was important to his personal fortunes and his literary reputation. The Galaxy was respectable, it was popular, and it paid generously. It also provided a venue where Whitman could join with other writers in exploring the meaning of literary nationalism and cultural democracy for the new era” (Edward Grier).

$8,500