The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to S. W. Green, [4(?) May 1876]
Date: May 4, 1876
Whitman Archive ID: loc.02239
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 derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller, 6 vols. (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), and supplemented, updated, or created by Whitman Archive staff as appropriate.
Contributors to digital file: Elizabeth Lorang, Kathryn Kruger, Zachary King, Eric Conrad, Alex Kinnaman, and Nicole Gray
 image 1 |  image 2 |
sample sent by S W Green May 3 '761
S. W. Green
Dear Sir:
Yours of 3d rec'd, with estimate, $157, for corrections (as per order & sample) and printing 600 copies 384 pages, on paper as per sample—said copies to be ready for binder on 24th May
This is to accept your estimate & to request & order the 600 copies—which I now do & shall expect the sheets ready on the 24th
Please make the corrections forthwith2 & send me proofs thereof here,—which will be promptly returned.
Walt Whitman
May 4 '76 Order to S W Green for corrections & 600 copies Leaves of Grass
Correspondent:
S. W. Green was a large New
York printing firm.
Notes:
1. This is a draft letter. On May 2, in a lost letter, Whitman asked Green to give him an estimate, which Green supplied on May 3 (Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). Probably Whitman accepted the offer on the following day. Green evidently delivered 600 copies to the binders on May 24, for in the Feinberg Collection, there is a check for $157 made out to Green on May 31. Green had printed some of Whitman's earlier works; see the letter from Whitman to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman of November 14, 1872. [back]
2. In the second printing of the 1876 Leaves of Grass intercalations included: "As in a Swoon," "The Beauty of the Ship," "When the Full-Grown Poet Came," and "After an Interval." [back]