This letter was obviously written to William Sloane Kennedy,
Whitman's Boston admirer, who was hoping to publish a book on
Whitman in England. His Reminiscences of Walt Whitman,
however, did not finally appear until 1896. Whitman frequently
traveled to New York in his later years to deliver a lecture on
Lincoln on the anniversary of his death. Talcott Williams was an
editor of the Philadelphia Press, an admirer of Whitman, and
later director of the Columbia University School of Journalism.
Kennedy and others of Whitman's Boston admirers contributed
frequently to the Boston Transcript. O'Conner is, of course,
William D. O'Connor, the author of The Good Gray Poet.
Ernest Rhys's letter on the reverse of this manuscript discusses
the English publication of Specimen Days, tells of a visit
with Mrs. Costelloe, and announces that Wilson the publisher was
too ill to attempt bringing out Kennedy's book.
