REVIEWERS and READERS
"Finally, after almost a century Horace Traubel's monumental work of nine volumes of conversations with the poet Walt Whitman is complete. With the publication of volumes 8 and 9, beautifully bound and expertly edited, we have an excellent daily record of Whitman during the last four years of his life. And what a record it is! These final two volumes provide information which will outdate every currently published biography of the poet. They also conclude a cultural and historical treasure trove which presents not only the candid Whitman but a gallery of his friends and disciples, including such writers as John Burroughs and Hamlin Garland. Useful to cultural historians as well as students of Whitman."
Jerome Loving, author of
the critical biography Walt Whitman: The Song of Himself
University of California Press (1998)"Kudos to Bentley for bringing this valuable series to a conclusion with well-edited and sumptuously produced volumes. We now have all of Traubel's detailed and informative account of Whitman's later years available and, like the other volumes, they are interesting reading indeed."
Joel Myerson, author of
Walt Whitman: A Descriptive Bibliography
Pittsburgh Series in Bibliography"...These two volumes finally complete the series, in a fashion entirely worthy of what was then, and still is now, a monumental undertaking. Provides a wealth of information regarding Whitman's political and literary opinions during the final years of his life and, in the many transcripts of letters from friends and admirers, some sense of Whitman's stature in the literary world about which he cared so intensely."
Nineteenth-Century Literature
Volume 52, Number 1