Walt Whitman and The New York Sun

Today, if an author reviews a book by another author he once sat next to at dinner, it can be considered a conflict of interest. Back in the days when most reviews were unsigned, however, it was easy to review your friends' books, or even your own.

Walt Whitman published anonymous reviews of "Leaves of Grass," and Whitman scholars believe he also was the author of an article that appeared in The New York Sun on December 1, 1842, that plugged "Franklin Evans," advising: "It would not be amiss for every youth, whether he be of city or of country, to read this book."

In a haphazard list of biographical facts about himself in an early notebook, Whitman included the item: "Wrote for Sun, &c." He gave no date, but scholars have linked this note to the otherwise unaccounted for period of 1842–3. They have identified about 10 articles from The Sun during that period that, because of style and subject matter — including baths, temperance, scientific demonstrations, and education — were likely written by Whitman. Whitman reprinted one of these articles in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, when he was the editor of that paper between 1846 and 1848.

In his later reviews of "Leaves of Grass," Whitman was a perceptive critic, writing in the Brooklyn Daily Times: "There can be no two thoughts on Whitman's egotism."