The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Dionysius Thomas, 13 October [1867]
Date: October 13, 1867
Whitman Archive ID: duk.00649
Source: The Trent Collection of Whitmaniana, Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library. 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 derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller, 6 vols. (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), and supplemented, updated, or created by Whitman Archive staff as appropriate.
Contributors to digital file: Kenneth M. Price, Elizabeth Lorang, Alex Kinnaman, Zachary King, Eric Conrad, and Nicole Gray
 image 1 |  image 2 |
Washington
Oct. 131
Dear Sir:
I write to ask your kind offices in the following described matter:
I sent to Doolady2 six weeks ago an order
Mr. James Gray, Bookbinder 16 Spruce st. 4th floor, is the custodian of the sheets of my Leaves of Grass, & has been the binder for me. The sheets are now at his place.
I hear that he has become involved—in fact has failed. If so, I regret it much.3
I have been waiting now over six weeks for the fulfilment of orders I have sent him for bound books—& now, under that state of things, I suppose it will not be possible for him to do the work.
Correspondent:
Dionysius Thomas was a New York City bookseller who
apparently had copies of the first edition of Leaves of
Grass (as Whitman told Gordon Lester Ford on August 23, 1867). However, by October 17,
1871, Whitman told an unidentified correspondent, "some time ago Dion
Thomas, bookseller, 2d story, Fulton st. north side, about midway bet. Nassau
and Broadway, had some copies of 1st edition Leaves of Grass—but whether
he still has them to sell I cannot say[.]"
Notes:
1.
This draft letter is endorsed (by Whitman), "Dion Thomas | Nassau st. bet
Beekman & Spru[ce]." Whitman crossed out the draft, and on the back
wrote a series of notes labeled "Specimen Days."
In the Clifton Waller Barrett Collection at the University of Virginia, there
is an envelope, postmarked October 16, addressed to: "Dion Thomas, |
Bookseller, &c | Nassau street, bet. Beekman & Spruce, | New York
City." [back]
2. Michael Doolady, a bookseller and publisher at 448 Broome Street in New York, was the publisher of Ada Clare's Only a Woman's Heart (1866). For Walt Whitman's correspondence with Doolady, see Whitman's letter of November 13, 1867. [back]
3. In 1888 Whitman spoke of "a history and a grief" in connection with the 1867 edition: "It was got up by a friend of mine, a young fellow, printed from type, in New York. One day I received the intelligence . . . that the place had been seized for debt. I received a portion of the books remaining—the most of them were lost" (Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden [1906–1996], 2:257). [back]