The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Sidney Lanier, 27 May [1878]
Date: May 27, 1878
Whitman Archive ID: jhu.00002
Source: Lanier Collection, The Johns Hopkins 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. Ted Genoways (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2004), vol. 7, and supplemented or updated by Whitman Archive staff.
Contributors to digital file: Alicia Bones, Nima Najafi Kianfar, Eder Jaramillo, and Nicole Gray
 image 1 |  image 2 |
Camden New Jersey1
May 27—I have to-day sent by mail, same address as this card, my Volume Leaves of Grass—Please notify me (by postal card will do) soon as it reaches you safely2
Walt Whitman
Notes:
1. This post card bears the address: Sidney Lanier | 33 Denmead Street | Baltimore | Md: It is postmarked: Camden | May | 27 | N.J. [back]
2. On May 5, 1878, Lanier informed Whitman that he had discovered a copy of Leaves of Grass in Bayard Taylor's library and had "spent a night of glory and delight upon it." Now "among your most earnest lovers," he ordered a copy of the book (Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Friday, May 25, 1888, 208). Lanier's ardor was short-lived. [back]