Nov. 13, 1867.1
In reply to your note of some days since, in reference to acting as my agent, for
sale of "Leaves of Grass," I would say as follows:
I presume that Anderson & Archer, binders, No. 6 Reade street, N. Y., have
now ready 100 copies, just bound.2 These you can have, if desired, as follows:
14 copies, as I understand from French & Richardson, are due you, having
already been paid for by you. The remaining 76 copies you can have at $1 (?)
8cts [each], this is [incomplete]3
Notes
- 1.
Endorsed (by Walt Whitman): "sent M. Doolady | 448"
Bookseller and publisher, Michael Doolady was the publisher of Ada Clare's
Only a Woman's Heart (1866).
[back]
- 2. Walt Whitman later
reduced his order to 90 copies for $31.50 in his February 19, 1868 letter to Anderson and Archer. [back]
- 3. The publishing history of
the 1867 edition of Leaves of Grass is confused. The
first issue was printed by Chapin, and Walt Whitman considered asking Henry E.
Huntington Library and Son to distribute it; see Whitman's August 26, 1866 letter to William D. O'Connor. One
of the later issues, to which Drum-Taps was added, was
bound by James Gray, who became bankrupt; see Whitman's October 13, 1867 letter to Dionysius Thomas. Evidently, Anderson and
Archer received and bound the sheets in Gray's possession. Dionysius Thomas and
Doolady, rather than Henry E. Huntington Library and Son, distributed the book.
According to his letter of February 18, 1868,
Whitman paid Anderson and Archer $.35 each for binding Leaves of Grass. [back]