The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Samuel Hollyer, 3 April 1888
Date: April 3, 1888
Whitman Archive ID: loc.02321
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), 6:47. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Braden Krien, Ryan Furlong, Ian Faith, and Stephanie Blalock
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328 Mickle Street
Camden New Jersey
April 3 '88
Thank you for the handsome etchings—which reach'd me safely. I send you herewith a picture of myself wh' I think might be better for your purposes than the Sarony one1—
Walt Whitman
Correspondent:
Samuel Hollyer
(1826–1919), an etcher and engraver, emigrated to the United States in
1851. His engraving of Whitman as a laborer appears in the first edition of Leaves of Grass. Whitman sent Hollyer the photograph
called "Lear" (reproduced in The Correspondence, ed.
Edwin Haviland Miller, vol. 4, following page 278, and in Specimen Days [1971], plate 180). Whitman referred favorably to the
finished etching on August 4, 1888, in his letter
to Richard Maurice Bucke, and in his Commonplace Book on the preceding day (see
Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919,
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). For Whitman's reservations later, see
Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Sunday, August 12, 1888 and Wednesday, August 15, 1888.
Notes:
1. Several of Sarony's photographs, taken in 1879, appear in Specimen Days (1971), plates 154 and 155. [back]