The Kansas Magazine

In a letter to the English critic William Rossetti in January 1872, Whitman included a copy of a new poem, "The Mystic Trumpeter," and explained that the poem was published in a magazine, "lately started away off in Kansas, fifteen or eighteen hundred miles inland." Later that month, Whitman observed to his brother, Thomas Jefferson Whitman, that the Kansas Magazine is designed in the "same style as the Atlantic—intended for Western Thought & reminiscences &c—." Whitman ultimately published two poems in the Kansas Magazine, edited by Henry King and published in Topeka, Kansas. King, an ambitious journalist who would eventually become the editor of the highly-regarded St. Louis Globe-Democrat, promised that the magazine would provide a voice from the "New West," just as Whitman suggested. King wished to establish a literary magazine that might compete with prestigious eastern magazines, such as the Atlantic Monthly. In keeping with his policy, King mostly published articles, stories, and poetry by Midwestern writers. Whitman, one of the few northeastern writers to appear in the magazine during its brief history, also wrote "Walt Whitman in Europe," an essay which appeared under the signature of his friend Richard J. Hinton in the magazine in December 1872.

Poems

"The Mystic Trumpeter." Kansas Magazine 1 (February 1872): 113-114. Reprinted in the Washington Daily Morning Chronicle, 7 February 1872; in translation by Csukássy Józset, Fõvárosi Lapok (Budapest), 19 January 1873, p. [61]; and in As a Strong Bird on Pinions Free (1872).

"Virginia—The West." Kansas Magazine 1 (March 1872): 219. Reprinted in As A Strong Bird on Pinions Free (1872).

Bibliography

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

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

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

Reynolds, David. Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography. New York: Vintage, 1995.

Whitman, Walt. The Correspondence. The Collected Writings of Walt Whitman. Ed. Edwin Haviland Miller. 6 vols. New York: New York University Press, 1961. II: 157; 159-162; V: 296.