FOTHERGILL, Jessie (1851-91). An autograph manuscript of Walt Whitman's poem "O Me! O Life!", probably in the hand of Fothergill rather than that of the poet himself, inscribed at the foot, "Jessie Fothergill, Jan. 16. 1887", on one page, 204 x 126mm.

FOTHERGILL, Jessie (1851-91).  An autograph manuscript of Walt Whitman's poem "O Me! O Life!", probably in the hand of Jessie Fothergill rather than that of the poet himself, inscribed at the foot, in a fainter, but similar, hand, "Jessie Fothergill, Jan. 16. 1887", on one page, 204 x 126mm. The poem was first published in the 1867 edition of "Leaves of Grass". Jessie Fothergill (1851-91) was an English novelist best known for her novel "The First Violin" (1876) which became something of a succès de scandale for its risqué depiction of an extra-marital affair. In 1886 she went on to publish "Some American Recollections" after a visit to the United States - spent largely in a Pennsylvanian mountain resort, for health reasons - and this visit to America may have provided the opportunity for a meeting with the poet, who by that time, following his own ill-health, was living in Camden, New Jersey. Fothergill - like Whitman, a 'free thinker' - had correspondingly radical tastes in literature and was known to admire Whitman's work, if selectively. See Helen C. Black's "Notable Women Authors of the Day. Biographical Sketches" (Glasgow, David Bryce and Son, 1893) where the author, having visited and interviewed Fothergill at her home in Manchester, writes: "Miss Fothergill is a great reader. She delights especially in Ruskin, Darwin, Georges Sand, and George Eliot's works, which she says have solaced many an hour of pain and illness. In lighter literature she prefers some of Anthony Trollope's novels, and considers Mrs. Gaskell's 'Sylvia's Lovers' one of the masterpieces of English fiction, and 'Wuthering Heights' as absolutely unique and unapproachable. Herbert Spencer and Freeman are great favourites, whilst in poetry Browning stands first in her affections, and next to him, Morris, Goethe, and bits of Walt Whitman" (p.195).