The Century

Whitman met Richard Watson Gilder, an assistant editor at the successful Scribner's Monthly in New York in 1877. Although Gilder was an admirer of Whitman and his poetry, Josiah Gilbert Holland, the Puritanical editor of Scribner's, was not. Holland once called Whitman "a wretched old fraud," and Whitman had had little success with the magazine under his editorship. But after Holland's death in 1881, the more liberal Gilder became the editor of the periodical, which was renamed The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine. From 1887-1890, Whitman published two prose pieces and five poems in the magazine. "Father Taylor and Oratory" was published in February 1887; the next year Gilder invited Whitman to contribute a compilation of articles about his experiences as a volunteer nurse for the Union armies. These articles, "Army Hospitals and Cases: Memoranda at the Time, 1863-1866" had first appeared in a series for the New York Weekly Graphic. Whitman told his friend Horace Traubel that "The Century under Gilder has always accepted my pieces and paid for them." Certainly the Century provided an important publication venue for Whitman at the end of his life.

Poems

"Twilight." Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine 37 (December 1887): 264. Reprinted in the "Sands at Seventy" annex to Leaves of Grass (1888).

"Old Age's Lambent Peaks." Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine 38 (September 1888): 735. Reprinted in the "Sands at Seventy" annex to Leaves of Grass (1888).

"My 71st Year." Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine 39 (November 1889): 31. Reprinted in Good-Bye My Fancy (1891).

"Old Age's Ship and Crafty Death's." Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine 40 (February 1890). 553. Reprinted in Good-Bye My Fancy (1891).

"A Twilight Song." Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine 40 (May 1890): 27 Published with the subtitle "For unknown buried soldiers, North and South." Revised and reprinted in Good-Bye My Fancy (1891).

Bibliography

Blodgett, Harold W., and Sculley Bradley, eds. Leaves of Grass: Comprehensive Reader's Edition. New York: New York University Press, 1965.

John, Arthur. The Best Years of the Century: Richard Watson Gilder, Scribner's Monthly, and the Century Magazine, 1870-1909. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981.

Mott, Frank Luther. A History of American Magazines, 1865-1885. Vol. 3. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1938.

Myerson, Joel. Walt Whitman: A Descriptive Bibliography. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993.

Scholnick, Robert. "Whitman and the Magazines: Some Documentary Evidence." American Literature 44 (1972): 221-246.