Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Letters
  3. Correspondence
  4. loc.02036

Walt Whitman to F. S. Ellis, 7 September [1876]

About This Item

  • Title: Walt Whitman to F. S. Ellis, 7 September [1876]
  • Date: September 7, 1876
  • Creator(s): Walt Whitman
  • Whitman Archive ID: loc.02036
  • Source: The Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, 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: Alex Kinnaman Elizabeth Lorang Kathryn Kruger Zachary King Eric Conrad Nicole Gray
  • Cite this page: Whitman, Walt. "Walt Whitman to F. S. Ellis, 7 September [1876]." The Walt Whitman Archive. Gen. ed. Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price. Accessed 09 May 2025. <http://www.whitmanarchive.org>.
  • Source File: loc.02036.xml (TEI)
 loc.02036.001_large.jpg Camden, N Jersey—US America Sept​ 71—

I send you to-day by mail, to same address as this card, my Volume, Two Rivulets. Please send me word, (by postal card will do,) soon as it reaches you safely

W Whitman  loc.02036.002_large.jpg

Correspondent:
Frederick Startridge Ellis (1830–1901) was a London bookseller, publisher, and author who published the works of William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Whitman first wrote to Ellis on August 12, 1871, to ask if he would publish Leaves of Grass. Ellis declined, writing in an August 23 letter that there were poems in Leaves of Grass that "would not go down in England," but he praised Whitman's poetry and sent him a specially printed copy of Algernon Charles Swinburne's Songs before Sunrise.

Notes

  • 1. The date is confirmed by an entry in Whitman's Commonplace Book (Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). [back]
Back to top