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Walt Whitman to Peter Bolger, [29 May 1884]

 loc_jyc.00049_large.jpg My Dear Bolger

Here is an article I have reeled off for you if you want it

your telegram recd yesterday too late. [cut away] for the paper [cut away]1

 loc_jyc.00050_large.jpg

Correspondent:
Peter Bolger (1852–1929) was a reporter for the Philadelphia Times and, later, for the Philadelphia Register. According to a notation in Whitman's Commonplace Book, the poet met Bolger in December 1878.


Notes

  • 1. This draft letter has been crossed out, and the paper is torn, leaving much of the letter missing. On the back, Whitman wrote a series of notes about adding portraits to Leaves of Grass and Specimen Days. Edwin Haviland Miller bases the date of the letter on a transcript in Stan V. Henkel's Catalog (February 26, 1912). He summarizes the content of the letter as follows: "WW sent a publicity release entitled 'Walt Whitman's Birthday,' referring to his sixty-fifth anniversary, for insertion in the Philadelphia Times on Saturday, May 31." [back]
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