Life & Letters

Correspondence

About this Item

Title: Walt Whitman to Trübner & Company, 5 October 1881

Date: October 5, 1881

Whitman Archive ID: loc.05059

Source: The Thomas Biggs Harned Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1842–1937, 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.

Notes for this letter were created by Whitman Archive staff and/or were derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller, 6 vols. (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), and supplemented or updated by Whitman Archive staff.

Contributors to digital file: Kirsten Clawson, Nima Najafi Kianfar, Stefan Schöberlein, and Nicole Gray



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Rand, Avery & Co., Printers.1
U S America
Boston,
Oct 5 1881

Trübner & Co:
Dear Sirs

Osgood & Co: of this city, who have set up & electrotyped a new, complete & markedly fuller edition (with several new pieces) of my Leaves of Grass inform me that by first issuing & bona fide selling in Great Britain, I can take out a copyright there, for this edition (such as it is.) We therefore send you over a few copies at once, with the request that you will immediately have the book entered for copyright & secured in my name—(immediately after which the work will be published here.)2

I am under many obligations in the past to my friend your Josiah Child, & should like to have this matter put in his hands—should like to have him write to me about it, direct as of old, to Camden New Jersey3


WW


Notes:

1. This is a draft letter; the finished letter was sent on October 5, 1881. [back]

2. Whitman completed reading the proofs on September 30 and sent a complete set to Dr. Bucke on October 4 (Whitman's Commonplace Book, Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). [back]

3. On October 31 Whitman received from Josiah Child "form of entry for English copyright," which he returned to Trübner & Co. on November 1 (Whitman's Commonplace Book). [back]


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