Whitman among the Bohemians

282 Pages·2014·1.53 MB·English

WHITMAN AMONG THE BOHEMIANS

The Iowa whITman SerIeS
Ed Folsom, series editor
Whitman
among the Bohemians
EDITED BY JOANNA LEVIN & EDWARD WHITLEY
University of iowa Press, iowa City
University of Iowa Press, Iowa City 52242
Copyright © 2014 by the University of Iowa Press
www.uiowapress.org
Printed in the United States of America
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ISSn: 1556- 5610
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Whitman among the Bohemians / edited by Joanna Levin and Edward Whitley.
pages cm.—(The Iowa Whitman Series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBn 978- 1- 60938- 272- 8 (pbk)
ISBn 978- 1- 60938- 293- 3 (ebk)
1. Whitman, Walt, 1819–1892—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Bohemianism—United
States—History—19th century. 3. Bohemianism in literature. I. Levin, Joanna, editor of
compilation. II. Whitley, Edward Keyes, editor of compilation.
PS3238.w44 2014
811′.3—dc22 2014010201
CONTENTS

Acknowledgments vii
Abbreviations ix
Introduction
Joanna LevIn and edward whITLey
xi
1. Bridging Brooklyn and Bohemia:
How the Brooklyn Daily Times Brought Whitman Closer to Pfaff’s
Karen KarBIener
1
2. Walt Whitman and the King of Bohemia:
The Poet in the Saturday Press
amanda GaILey
19
3. Publishing Pfaff’s:
Henry Clapp and Poetry in the Saturday Press
InGrId SaTeLmaJer
37
4. On Puffing:
The Saturday Press and the Circulation of Symbolic Capital
LeIf ecKSTrom
53
5. “Freedom for Women from Conventional Lies”:
The “Queen of Bohemia” and the Feminist Feuilleton
Joanna LevIn
75
6. Whitman, the Antebellum Theater,
and the Cultural Authority of the Bohemian Critic
edward whITLey
98
7. “An Unusually Active Market for Calamus”:
Whitman and Vanity Fair
roBerT J. SchoLnIcK
114
8. Whitman and the “Picture- Makers”
ruTh L. Bohan
132
9. Adorning Myself to Bestow Myself:
Reading Leaves of Grass in 1860
LoGan eSdaLe
155
10. “Tell What I Meant by Calamus”:
Walt Whitman’s Vision of Comradeship from Fred Vaughan
to the Fred Gray Association
STePhanIe m. BLaLocK
172
11. Whitman and Menken, Loosing and Losing Voices
eLIza rIchardS
192
12. Stedman, Whitman, and the
Transatlantic Canonization of American Poetry
mary LoeffeLhoLz
213
Bibliography 231
Contributors 243
Index 247
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are very grateful for the many people, institutions, and organiza-
tions that have supported this project along the way, beginning with Eliza
Richards, whose first, enthusiastic “yes!” to the idea of a collection of
essays on Whitman and the bohemians let us know that we were on the
right track. Ed Folsom, the series editor for the Iowa Whitman Series, and
everyone associated with the University of Iowa Press—Charlotte Wright,
Elisabeth Chretien, Joseph Parsons, and the anonymous peer reviewer—
have been supportive and encouraging at every step of the process. We
also thank Alfred Bendixen and the American Literature Association for
giving us a venue to try out early versions of the material that appears
in this collection, as well as Leif Eckstrom for organizing a panel at the
annual conference of the Modern Language Association to do the same.
Other scholars to whom we are indebted for thoughtful suggestions, en-
couraging words, nods of approval at conference presentations, and other
forms of support include Gavin Jones, Virginia Jackson, Mark Lause,
Bryan Waterman, Renee Sentilles, Karen Sanchez-E ppler, Leon Jack-
son, Jerome Loving, Ezra Greenspan, Michael C. Cohen, Vivian Pollak,
Robert S. Levine, and Martha Nell Smith.
Whitman among the Bohemians would not exist without its digital
counterpart, The Vault at Pfaff’s: An Archive of Art and Literature by the
Bohemians of Antebellum New York (http://lehigh.edu/pfaffs). Robert
Weidman and Julia Maserjian have provided continued support for The
Vault at Pfaff’s since 2004. We are all tremendously indebted to them and
to everyone else who has contributed to this website over the course of the
past ten years. We are particularly grateful to Kurt Hoberg not only for in-
dexing every issue of the New York Saturday Press for The Vault at Pfaff’s
as an undergraduate research assistant, but also for returning as a post-
graduate to help format and copyedit Whitman among the Bohemians for
publication. We also thank Ed Folsom and Ken Price for making the Walt
Whitman Archive the invaluable resource that it is.
We are grateful to the University of Iowa Press and the Walt Whitman
Quarterly Review for permission to reprint, in modified form, Amanda
{ vii }
Gailey’s “Walt Whitman and the King of Bohemia: The Poet in the Satur-
day Press” and Robert J. Scholnick’s “‘An Unusually Active Market for
Calamus’: Whitman, Vanity Fair, and the Fate of Humor in a Time of War,
1860–1863.” These essays appeared in issues 25.4 (2008) and 19 (2002), re-
spectively. We are similarly grateful for permission to reprint the images
that appear on the cover of this book and in chapters 8 and 11 by the New
York Public Library, the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the Uni-
versity of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, and the Thomas Biggs Harned
Collection at the Library of Congress.
viii } acKnowLedGmenTS
ABBREVIATIONS

BdT Brooklyn Daily Times. Brooklyn, ny: Bennett and Smith,
1855–1932.
Corr. Walt Whitman: The Correspondence. 6 vols. Edited by
Edwin Haviland Miller. New York: New York University
Press, 1961–1977.
LG Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass. Philadelphia: David McKay,
1891–1892.
LG55 Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass. Brooklyn, ny: n.p., 1855.
LG56 Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass. New York: Fowler and Wells,
1856.
LG60 Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass. Boston: Thayer and
Eldridge, 1860.
nuPm Walt Whitman, Notebooks and Unpublished Prose
Manuscripts. 6 vols. Edited by Edward Grier. New York:
New York University Press, 1984.
Pw Walt Whitman, Walt Whitman Prose Works 1892. 2 vols.
Edited by Floyd Stovall. New York: New York University
Press, 1963.
SP New York Saturday Press. New York: Henry Clapp Jr.,
1858–1860 and 1865–1866. Available at The Vault at Pfaff’s,
http://lehigh.edu/pfaffs.
vf Vanity Fair. New York: Frank J. Thomson, 1859–1863.
Available at Making of America, http://quod.lib.umich
.edu/m/moagrp/.
wwa The Walt Whitman Archive. Edited by Ed Folsom and
Kenneth M. Price. http://www.whitmanarchive.org.
wwc Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden. 9 vols.
Various publishers, 1906–1996.
Note: The following sources are available online at the
Walt Whitman Archive: LG, LG55, LG56, LG60, and wwc.
{ ix }