1870. 1870. New Year's Address of the Carriers of the General Advertiser
[Providence: General Advertiser, late 1869]. Letterpress broadside, printed in two columns, 18 x 11.5 inches. Old folds, minor foxing and creasing. Very good. Item #3800
An exceedingly-rare Rhode Island carrier's address whose authorship is attributed to noted transcendental poet and spiritualist Sarah Helen Whitman. The text celebrates the wealth and scenery of Providence, and mentions the weather challenges of the year before. Whitman then mentions "wars o'er Roger Williams and his creed, On which our Clericusses disagreed." She then notes "What countless reams of controversy flow From the 'true story' told by Mrs. Stowe," which seems to be a reference to Uncle Tom's Cabin. Whitman also writes about "Wall Street battles," "Chinese coolies" "Great Labor movements," and more. She writes several lines about women's rights, beginning with "woman's claim confronts us everywhere: In robes of sumptuous black or sheeny white She mounts the rostrum and asserts her right" the latter lines referring to new demands by organized labor and calls for equal rights for women. Sarah Helen Whitman was a well-regarded poet and spiritualist, friend to Margaret Fuller, Frances Sargent Osgood, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and most famous today for her doomed romantic relationship with Edgar Allan Poe. Lines in the present broadside such as "Surely old sixty-nine has done his best To conjure all the demons of unrest" echo Whitman's interest in the occult. OCLC records just a single institutional holding of this carrier's address, at Brown (they have three copies), who notes the "supposed author" as Whitman due to a penciled attribution on the verso. Whitman also wrote the carrier's address for the General Advertiser the following year.
Price: $750.00