Life & Letters

Correspondence

About this Item

Title: Walt Whitman to Benjamin Ticknor, 18 December 1881

Date: December 18, 1881

Whitman Archive ID: loc.00531

Source: Papers of Benjamin Holt Ticknor, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 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: Stefan Schoeberlein, Nima Najafi Kianfar, Kirsten Clawson, and Nicole Gray



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Camden N J
Dec. 18 '81

My dear Ben: Ticknor

Thank you for your (& O'Reilley's)1 suggestion about Swinburne—I cannot consent however to solicit him to write a notice—& must decline to do so—But I have dispatched to him by mail an autograph copy of the new edition, & a little bundle of slips of the new pieces & some notices—without however any letter from me)2

—I have sent to David Bogue a list of some forty or more special friends of L. of G. (& author) in Great Britain & on the continent & have requested him to inform them—by little printed circular or otherwise—that he is the London pub. & agent of the book—


Walt Whitman

☞The 15 copies for editors have not yet reach'd me—perhaps they will come to-morrow—have they been sent?


Notes:

1. Whitman misspelled O'Reilly's name. The letter referred to is apparently lost. [back]

2. Whitman sent the book and slips to Swinburne's publishers, Chatto & Windus (Whitman's Commonplace Book, Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). Oscar Wilde wrote to Swinburne on Whitman's behalf in January, 1882. See the letter from Whitman to Oscar Wilde and Joseph M. Stoddart of January 18, 1882[back]


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