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.


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