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



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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]


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