Walt Whitman to an Unidentified Correspondent, 28 December 1880

About This Item

Title: Walt Whitman to an Unidentified Correspondent, 28 December 1880
Date: December 28, 1880
Creator(s): Walt Whitman
Whitman Archive ID: uva.00384
Source: Papers of Walt Whitman (MSS 3829), Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, Albert H. Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia . Transcribed from digital images or a microfilm reproduction of the original item. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.

Notes for this letter were created by Whitman Archive staff and/or were derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller, 6 vols. (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), and supplemented or updated by Whitman Archive staff.
Contributors to digital file: Alicia Bones Grace Thomas Eder Jaramillo Kevin McMullen Nicole Gray
Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Walt Whitman to an Unidentified Correspondent, 28 December 1880." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 04 December 2024. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
Source File: uva.00384.xml (TEI)

uva.00051.001.jpg 431 Stevens Street Camden New Jersey Dec: 28 '80 Dear Sir1

I shall be glad to supply you with a set (Two Volumes) of my books—There is only one kind of binding—

Walt Whitman

uva.00051.002.jpg

1. This is a draft letter. The only clue to the identification of the correspondent is a reference in Whitman's Commonplace Book to the fact that Whitman sent his two-volume edition to John P. Woodbury of Boston on this date (Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). This draft letter was crossed out, and on the back Whitman experimented with what appear to be trial titles. The ideas and language used here are echoed in the partial line "the embers left from earlier fires" in the 1888 poem, "Continuities." [back]