The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: William D. O'Connor to Walt Whitman, 16 March 1883
Date: March 16, 1883
Whitman Archive ID: loc.03277
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.
Contributors to digital file: Alex Kinnaman and Nicole Gray
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Providence, R.I
March 16, 1883
Dear Walt:
The remainder of the proof of the G.G.P., which came this morning, I enclose this afternoon.
I hardly like your alterations of the names of some of the poems on galley slip No 32, though I have let them stand. Of course, these are the names of the poems now, so mayhap the change is justified, spite of the little anachronism.
You will see that I have (not without misgiving) struck out half a dozen absurd lines at the end of the G.G.P. Properly speaking, I suppose I ought to retain my follies, in deference to historical verity; yet the omission, after all, is slight and immaterial.
As a rule, the pamphlet ought to be a reproduction of the original.
A line has been dropped from my reply to Lanman. I have supplied it from memory, but please see that it is correct as per copy.
I hope you can let me have a revise of the whole compoodlement—Introductory, Good Gray Poet and all.
About a motto for the appendix, I will search memory and try to find something appropriate.—I hope Bucke retained his splendid epigraph for the book from Lucretius—the most felicitous thing I ever saw!
Faithfully—
W D O'Connor
W.W.