The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Thomas W. H. Rolleston to Walt Whitman, 10 November 1889
Date: November 10, 1889
Whitman Archive ID: loc.07632
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.
Contributors to digital file: Zainab Saleh, Brandon James O'Neil, Andrew David King, and Stephanie Blalock
 image 1 |
Nov. 10.
13 Emser Strasse
Wiesbaden
Germany.
My dear Walt
The enclosed will interest you. From all accounts the reception of book1 here is very satisfactory.
I hope your 71st year finds you cheerful——I can hardly hope well, for I have heard of late illnesses with great grief. We are here for my wifes2 health, which I am glad to say is much improved.
Ever yours
T. W. Rolleston.
Correspondent:
Thomas William Hazen Rolleston
(1857–1920) was an Irish poet and journalist. After attending college in
Dublin, he moved to Germany for a period of time. He wrote to Whitman
frequently, beginning in 1880, and later produced with Karl Knortz the first
book-length translation of Whitman's poetry into German. In 1889, the collection
Grashalme: Gedichte [Leaves of
Grass: Poems] was published by Verlags-Magazin in Zurich, Switzerland.
See Walter Grünzweig, Constructing the German Walt Whitman (Iowa
City: University of Iowa Press, 1995). For more information on Rolleston, see
Walter Grünzweig, "Rolleston, Thomas William Hazen (1857–1920)," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D.
Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998).
Notes:
1. Rolleston is referring to the German translation of Leaves of Grass (Grashalme: Gedichte) that he and his co-translator Karl Knortz had just published. [back]
2. Rolleston married Edith Caroline de Burgh (1859?–1896) in Dublin, Ireland, in 1879. [back]