ABSTRACT
Letter from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Whitman, 21 July 1855. Transcribed from facsimile copy in Walt Whitman: A Selection of the Manuscripts, Books and Association Items. Gathered by Charles E. Feinberg. Catalogue of an Exhibition Held at The Detroit Public Library, Detroit, Michigan, 1955. The Introduction to this Catalogue by David C. Mearns, Chief of the Manuscripts Division of the Library of Congress, notes that ‘This has been called “probably now the most famous letter in American literary history”.’
