Title: Walt Whitman to George Routledge & Sons, 30 December 1867
Date: December 30, 1867
Whitman Archive ID: loc.01567
Source: The 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), 1:355. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Kenneth M. Price, Kathryn Kruger, Elizabeth Lorang, Zachary King, and Eric Conrad
Dec 30
1867.
1
Geo. Routledge & sons2
416 Broome st N. Y.
I have received the letter asking me to write for the "Broadway". I do not write much, but your invitation is cordially appreciated, and may serve as the spur toward something. I can at present only briefly say that should I be able to prepare an article, or poem, appropriate for the purposes of the magazine, I will send it on—& that I shall surely try to do so.
My address is at the Attorney General's office here. (New York house, please forward this to Mr. Edmund Routledge, London.)
1. This draft letter is endorsed, "letter to Messrs. Routledge | Dec. 30, 1867. . . . I sent 'Whispers | of Heavenly Death' | which they printed & paid handsomely for | in gold." [back]
2. The publishers of the Broadway Annual (London) printed two sympathetic accounts of Walt Whitman in 1867. W. Clark Russell termed him one of America's eminent poets, and Robert Buchanan devoted an entire article to Walt Whitman. On December 28, 1867, the New York office of the firm requested "one or two papers or poems" (Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden [1906–1996], 1:263). Walt Whitman sent "Whispers of Heavenly Death," which appeared in October 1868, and for which he received $50; Whitman accepted this money as compensation in his February 19, 1868 letter to Routledge and Sons. [back]