Item #247148 Autograph Letter, Signed (“Edwin Markham”, with a flourish and spatter), to journalist Alfred Henry Lewis, concerning praise of Markham’s poem Virigilia, published in the Cosmopolitan for August 1905. Edwin Markham.

‘The noise of the ant-hills will not disturb me …’

Autograph Letter, Signed (“Edwin Markham”, with a flourish and spatter), to journalist Alfred Henry Lewis, concerning praise of Markham’s poem Virigilia, published in the Cosmopolitan for August 1905.

52 Washington Pl., New York: 2 August 1905.

Price: $750.00


About the item

1 page pen and ink on a folded sheet. 12mo. ‘The noise of the ant-hills will not disturb me …’. Fine.

Item #247148

Markham’s love poem “Virgilia”, published in the Cosmopolitan magazine for August 1905, filled the letter columns of New York literary papers with praise and disdain. Markham writes Lewis, a prolific author and frequent contributor to the magazine,
“It is reward indeed to be praised by your dauntless pen. My ‘Virgilia’ pleases you, that is enough. The noise of the ant-hills will not disturb me, now that the mountain has spoken.”

“emphasis on changes in literary forms and their movement away from social commentary and political topics made much of what distinguished Markham's verse dated. He gradually fell from critical favor, and his reputation never fully recovered. Nevertheless, despite the critics' increasing disenchantment with him, Markham remained an important public figure, traveling across the nation and receiving warm praise nearly everywhere he went” — ANB.