The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to William James Linton, 24 February 1875
Date: February 24, 1875
Whitman Archive ID: loc.02803
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.
Editorial note: The annotation, "see notes Aug 27 1888," is in the hand of Horace Traubel.
Contributors to digital file: Elizabeth Lorang, Kathryn Kruger, Zachary King, Eric Conrad, Alex Kinnaman, Marie Ernster, Noelle Bates, Amanda J. Axley, and Stephanie Blalock
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Camden,
Feb. 24 '75.1
My dear Linton;
I want you to have printed very nicely for me 1000 impressions of the cut, my head, to go in book.2 Herewith I send the size of sheet. If convenient I should like to see a proof, fac simile, first.
I am still holding out here—don't get well yet—& don't go under yet.
Love to you—Write immediately on receiving this.
This sized sheet—print dark in color as you think they will stand, (I dont like them too weak in color).
to W. J. Linton Feb 24 '75
Correspondent:
William J. Linton
(1812–1897), a British-born wood engraver, came to the United States in
1866 and settled near New Haven, Connecticut. He illustrated the works of John
Greenleaf Whittier, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Cullen Bryant, and
others, wrote the "indispensable" History of Wood-Engraving in
America (1882), and edited Poetry of America,
1776–1876 (London, 1878), in which appeared eight of Whitman's
poems as well as a frontispiece engraving of the poet. According to his Threescore and Ten Years, 1820 to
1890—Recollections (1894), 216–217, Linton met with Whitman
in Washington and later visited him in Camden (which Whitman reported in his
November 9, 1873, letter to Peter Doyle): "I
liked the man much, a fine-natured, good-hearted, big fellow, . . . a true poet
who could not write poetry, much of
wilfulness
accounting for his neglect of form."
Notes:
1. This draft letter is endorsed: "to W. J. Linton Feb 24 '75." [back]
2. During America's centennial celebration in 1876, Whitman reissued the fifth edition of Leaves of Grass in the repackaged form of a "Centennial Edition" and "Author's Edition," with most copies personally signed by the poet. For more information, see Frances E. Keuling-Stout, "Leaves of Grass, 1876, Author's Edition," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]