Ralph Keeler, Literary Vagabond

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Above: the lost literary vagabond, Ralph Keeler (1840-c.1873). Who? Exactly.

I'm currently writing a conference paper on the journalist and writer Ralph Olmstead Keeler and, in particular, his apparently indelible effect on Gilded Age friends and contemporaries like Mark Twain, William Dean Howells and Thomas Bailey Aldrich. More of that soon. The purpose of this post, however, is to assemble an ongoing list of Keeler's published works with links to full text where available - a provisional bibliography, if you will, for this forgotten, influential figure. If you're wondering why Keeler might be worth resurrecting, this potted biography by Thomas Bailey Aldrich, written for the New York Tribune not long after Keeler's mysterious disappearance in December 1873, gives plenty of clues:

A caveat: this list is far from complete, and a work in progress. All additions gratefully received and acknowledged here.

Books:

Gloverson and his Silent Partners (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1869).

Vagabond Adventures (Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co., 1870).

(See also: Thomas Bailey Aldrich, "The Friend of My Youth", The Atlantic Monthly, 27:160 (February 1871), an article that grows out of Keeler's reminiscences about "Governor Dorr" in Vagabond Adventures.)

Articles:

According to Franklin Dickerson Walker's San Francisco's Literary Frontier (1939):

"The Eldest Scholar", The California Teacher, 5:5 (November 1867).

"Three Years as a Negro Minstrel", The Atlantic Monthly, 24:141 (July 1869)

"A View of the National Capital", The Overland Monthly, 3:5 (November 1869).

"The Tour of Europe for $181 in Currency", The Atlantic Monthly, 26:153 (July 1870)

"Confessions of a Patent-Medicine Man", The Atlantic Monthly, 26:158 (December 1870)

"Up the Mississippi" - a series of articles published in Every Saturday throughout 1871 documenting Keeler's trip along the river accompanied by artist Alfred Waud. Not currently digitized, as far as I can tell. Anyone?

"Geneva", Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 45:270 (November 1872)

"The Fat Man's Story", Appletons' Journal, 7:163 (May 11, 1872)

"Street-Corner Studies", Appletons' Journal, 7:167 (June 8, 1872)

"The Great Scare at Shirkshire", Appletons' Journal, 7:170 (June 29, 1872)

"With the American Ambulance Corps at Paris", Lippincott's Magazine, 12:28 (July, 1873)

"An Amateur Supe's Story", The Atlantic Monthly, 32:189 (July 1873)

"Put-in-Bay and the Wine Islands", Appletons' Journal, 10: 247 (December 13, 1873)

"Around Lake Leman", Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 48:283 (December 1873)

"Owen Brown's Escape from Harper's Ferry", The Atlantic Monthly, 33:197 (March 1874)

Poetry:

"The Village Bell", "At the Play", "Madge", in Poetry of the Pacific: Selections and Original Poems from the Poets of the Pacific States, May Wentworth ed. (San Francisco: Pacific Publishing Company, 1867).

Translations:

George Sand, The Marquis de Villemer, Ralph Keeler trans. (Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1871). (First serialised in Every Saturday.)