Title: Walt Whitman to Ainsworth R. Spofford, [September(?) 1881]
Date: September 1881
Whitman Archive ID: loc.05056
Source: Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1964), 3:247. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Kirsten Clawson, Eder Jaramillo, Stefan Schöberlein, and Nicole Gray
My dear Mr Spofford1
If convenient won't you inform me soon as possible by letter here, of the dates of my copyrights on Leaves of Grass—I think they were in 1856, 1860, 1866 (or 7) and in 1876—but want to know exactly—
Walt Whitman
If you have a printed slip or abstract of the copyright laws, please enclose that also.
address me
Boston
care Osgood & Co:
211 Tremont Street
1. This is a draft of a letter sent to the Librarian of Congress during Whitman's Boston stay. See also Whitman's draft of a later letter to Spofford, written around August 1, 1882. [back]