ABSTRACT
Extract from William Sloane Kennedy, Reminiscences of Walt Whitman (London, 1896), pp. 162–90.
William Sloane Kennedy (1850–1929) was one of the most polemically effective admirers of Whitman. He is the author of The Fight of a Book for the World: A companion volume to Leaves of Grass (1926) which traces the varying fortunes of Whitman’s book during the decades. Like Burroughs and other disciples of Whitman, he asks that the poet be accepted as a whole, even while recognizing the existence of imperfections and faults. He even attempts a rationalization of the catalogues and inventories of Whitman which most of those whose appreciation is more lukewarm have been content to abandon.
