From the Humanym archive

Ralph Waldo Emerson to Walt Whitman, 1855

After reading the unsigned first edition of Leaves of Grass, Emerson writes an unsolicited fan letter to its unknown author, Walt Whitman.

Concord, Massachusetts, 21 July, 1855.

Dear Sir—

I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of "Leaves of Grass." I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed. I am very happy in reading it, as great power makes us happy. It meets the demand I am always making of what seemed the sterile and stingy nature, as if too much handiwork, or too much lymph in the temperament, were making our western wits fat and mean. I give you joy of your free and brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find incomparable things said incomparably well, as they must be. I find the courage of treatment which so delights us, and which large perception only can inspire.

I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which yet must have had a long foreground somewhere, for such a start. I rubbed my eyes a little, to see if this sunbeam were no illusion; but the solid sense of the book is a sober certainty. It has the best merits, namely, of fortifying and encouraging.

I did not know until I last night saw the book advertised in a newspaper that I could trust the name as real and available for a post-office. I wish to see my benefactor, and have felt much like striking my tasks and visiting New York to pay you my respects.

R. W. Emerson

Why this letter

Walt Whitman had self-published the first edition of Leaves of Grass anonymously in 1855 and sent a copy to Emerson, already the most respected man of letters in America. Emerson's reply, praising the book as 'wit and wisdom' and greeting Whitman 'at the beginning of a great career,' became one of the most quoted lines in American literary history. Whitman, without asking permission, had the letter printed in the next edition of Leaves of Grass and even stamped Emerson's words in gold on the spine, which embarrassed Emerson but did not change his opinion of the book.

Provenance

Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
To: Walt Whitman
Written: 21 July 1855, Concord, Massachusetts
Source: Leaves of Grass (1856), appendix "Leaves-Droppings": Correspondence, via The Walt Whitman Archive
Rights: Public domain — Ralph Waldo Emerson died in 1882; this letter has been reprinted many times since its first, unauthorized publication in 1856.

First printed in the New-York Tribune, 10 October 1855 (Whitman gave the letter to the paper's editor, Charles A. Dana); this text follows the printing in the appendix to the 1856 edition of Leaves of Grass, as transcribed by The Walt Whitman Archive. The manuscript letter is held by the Library of Congress.