The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Albert Johannsen to Walt Whitman, 22 March 1890
Date: March 22, 1890
Whitman Archive ID: loc.05037
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: On the verso of this letter Whitman drafted a poem under the heading "such curious idle meditations." The poem was eventually titled "On, On the Same, Ye Jocund Twain."
Contributors to digital file: Blake Bronson-Bartlett, Ian Faith, Zainab Saleh, Brandon James O'Neil, and Stephanie Blalock
 image 1 |  image 2 |
State Center, Iowa.1
March 22, 1890.
Mr. Whitman:—
Dear Sir:—
I am collecting the autographs of famous men and I would like to have yours in my collection. If you will be so kind as to send me your autograph, you will greatly oblig.
Yours Truly
Albert Johannsen.
Correspondent:
Albert Johannsen (1871–1962)
was a geologist and illustrator, and taught at the University of Chicago from
1909 until his retirement on 1937. Johannsen studied at the University of
Illinois and the University of Utah and later received a PhD in petrography from
Johns Hopkins University. While at Utah, Johannsen worked as an illustrator for
the Salt Lake City Herald and a topographer for the Salt
Lake City Engineering Department. He is the author of eight textbooks and over
forty papers on mineralogy and geology. Johannsen was also a prolific collector
of nickel and dime novels, with a collection of over 4,500, and is the author of
The House of Beadle and Adams and Its Dime and Nickel
Novels (1950) and Phiz: Illustrations from the Novels
of Charles Dickens (1956) ("Geologist's Rites Today," The Tampa Tribune [January 13, 1962], 9; "Geologist Johannsen Dies at
90," The Orlando Sentinel [January 12, 1962], 30).
Notes:
1. Whitman has drawn a line, in ink, through Johannsen's autograph request. [back]