The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to George Wood, 29 December 1866
Date: December 29, 1866
Whitman Archive ID: loc.00846
Source: Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 1:304. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Elizabeth Lorang, Brett Barney, Vanessa Steinroetter, and Alyssa Olson
ATTORNEY GENERAL'S OFFICE, Washington.
Dec. 29, 1866.
My dear Mr. Wood,1
I write to solicit from you $2, for helping my soldier boys to some festivities these holiday & New Year times.
Yours
Walt Whitman
Notes:
1. Apparently George Wood (1799–1870), who went to the Treasury Department as a clerk in 1822 and held various posts in that bureau until his death. He was the author of several satirical works, Peter Schlemihl in America (Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1848) and The Gates Wide Open; or, Scenes in Another World (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1858; rev. ed. 1870); see National Cyclopaedia of American Biography. Undoubtedly he became acquainted with Whitman through William and Ellen O'Connor. Ellen mentions a Mr. Wood in her letter of July 5, 1864, (Charles E. Feinberg Collection). See also Wood's letter to Whitman of January 15, 1863 and Whitman's July 17, 1863 letter to Wood. [back]