The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to David McKay, 25 April 1890
Date: April 25, 1890
Whitman Archive ID: loc.03111
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.
Related item: Whitman wrote this draft of a letter to David McKay on the back of an envelope in which he had received a letter from Frank G. Carpenter on April 17, 1890. See loc.01206.
Contributors to digital file: Blake Bronson-Bartlett, Ian Faith, and Stephanie Blalock
 image 1 |  image 2 |
sent to D McKay April 25 '901
Yes will sell the London proposer 100 sets of the entire autograph sheets, plates & back labels for complete book and throw in one of my bound copies, (making 101 altogether)—for $320—I to receive that sum in full—you to make a fair bonus addition for your trouble.
Correspondent:
David McKay (1860–1918) took
over Philadelphia-based publisher Rees Welsh's bookselling and publishing
businesses in 1881–82. McKay and Rees Welsh published the 1881 edition of
Leaves of Grass after opposition from the Boston
District Attorney prompted James R. Osgood & Company of Boston, the original publisher,
to withdraw. McKay also went on to publish Specimen Days &
Collect, November Boughs, Gems
from Walt Whitman, Complete Prose Works,
and the final Leaves of Grass, the so-called deathbed edition. For
more information about McKay, see Joel Myerson, "McKay, David (1860–1918)," Walt Whitman: An
Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998).
Notes:
1. This a draft letter; the version of the letter that Whitman sent to McKay is not extant. [back]