Life & Letters

Correspondence

About this Item

Title: Walt Whitman to John Morley, 17 December 1868

Date: December 17, 1868

Whitman Archive ID: loc.01571

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), 2:75. 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, Elizabeth Lorang, Zachary King, and Eric Conrad




Dec. 17, '68 1

John Morley,
Dear Sir:2

I send you an original piece of mine, in hopes it will be found available for say the March Number of your magazine. The price is 4 pounds—$20—in gold—and four copies of the number in which it is printed, sent me by mail.

Please send me an answer, with decision, by next or succeeding mail.

My address is Attorney Gen's office, this city.


Notes:

1. This draft letter is endorsed, "letter to Mr. Morley | reach'd London | probably New Year's | day"; "went by steamer Dec 19 | reach'd London | New Year's." [back]

2. John Morley (1838–1923), a statesman as well as a man of letters, was editor of the Fortnightly Review from 1867 to 1882. He had visited Whitman in February 1868; see Whitman's February 17, 1868, letter to Moncure D. Conway and Morley's Recollections (1917), 2:105. Morley replied on January 5, 1869, that he could not print Walt Whitman's poem ("Thou vast Rondure, Swimming in Space") until April: "If that be not too late for you, and if you can make suitable arrangements for publication in the United States so as not to interfere with us in point of time, I shall be very glad." Unaccountably, the poem did not appear in print. [back]


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