The Walt Whitman Archive
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 derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller, 6 vols. (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), and supplemented, updated, or created by Whitman Archive staff as appropriate.
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]