The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to David McKay, 3 April 1891
Date: April 3, 1891
Whitman Archive ID: har.00042
Source: Manuscripts Department, Houghton Library, Harvard
University. 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: Blake Bronson-Bartlett, Ian Faith, Alex Ashland, and Stephanie Blalock
 image 1 |  image 2 |
Camden New Jersey1
April 3, '91
Yes there were certainly 100 sets—I see by my memoranda book—50 to yr order Aug: 27 '90 & 50 same order Oct: 21 '902—you can of course verify it all by Oldach's3 delivery
Walt Whitman
Correspondent:
David McKay (1860–1918) took
over Philadelphia-based publisher Rees Welsh's bookselling and publishing
businesses in 1881–82. McKay and Rees Welsh published the 1881 edition of
Leaves of Grass after opposition from the Boston
District Attorney prompted James R. Osgood & Company of Boston, the original publisher,
to withdraw. McKay also went on to publish Specimen Days &
Collect, November Boughs, Gems
from Walt Whitman, Complete Prose Works,
and the final Leaves of Grass, the so-called deathbed edition. For
more information about McKay, see Joel Myerson, "McKay, David (1860–1918)," Walt Whitman: An
Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998).
Notes:
1. This postal card is addressed: David McKay | publisher &c: | 23 south 9th street | Philadelphia. It is postmarked: Camden, N.J. | Apr 3 | 6 PM | 91; Received 5 | Apr | 3 | 730 PM | [illegible] | Phila. [back]
2. See Whitman's November 1, 1890, letter to David McKay. On the following day McKay paid Whitman $127.87—"pays up (does it?) to date everything (inc'ng the 6 sets above)" (Whitman's Commonplace Book, Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). See also Whitman's March 31, 1891 letter to Horace Traubel, as well as the poet's April 5 and April 6, 1891, letters to McKay. [back]
3. Frederick Oldach (1823–1907) was a German bookbinder whose Philadelphia firm bound Whitman's November Boughs (1888) and Complete Poems & Prose (1888), as well as the special seventieth-birthday issue of Leaves of Grass (1889). [back]