The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Rees Welsh & Company, 17 June 1882
Date: June 17, 1882
Whitman Archive ID: hsp.00010
Source: The Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 3:291. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Stefan Schoeberlein, Nima Najafi Kianfar, Eder Jaramillo, and Nicole Gray
431 Stevens Street
Camden N J
p m June 17 '82
Dear Sirs1
Yours of 16th rec'd—Although delayed from calling upon you by one or two little matters, I still entertain your proposals—I have had several—For one point I should like some publishing & radiating spot near my own locality—for another to retain control of my book & personally advise in selling & publishing it—Will call upon you Monday bet'n 11 and 12—
Walt Whitman
What would you say to entering decidedly into the publishing field? Haven't you thought of it? I want to publish my Prose writings in a companion volume to L of G—Then there is a Canada man who has a book—"Walt Whitman—a Study"2—(Osgood & Co: had the MS. & would doubtless have issued it but for the flurry.)—Making three Volumes that ought to go out together, from the same house & hands—
How would it suit you to get up this three-fold team & dash into the fall publishing trade?
Notes:
1. Rees Welsh & Co., booksellers and publishers, wrote to Whitman on June 5 offering to print his book. On June 16 the firm wanted to proceed "at once." See also the letter from Whitman to the publishers of June 20, 1882. [back]
2. Whitman wrote to Richard Maurice Bucke on June 10 "ab't 'motif' of his book & ab't printing in Phila" (Whitman's Commonplace Book, Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). [back]