The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Byron G. Morrison, 21 April 1876
Date: April 21, 1876
Whitman Archive ID: med.00702
Source: The location of this manuscript is unknown. Genoways derives his transcription from a description of the letter in a Christie's auction catalog for the sale that took place on December 11, 2001. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman: The Correspondence, ed. Ted Genoways (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2004), 7:47. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Alex Kinnaman, Jonathan Y. Cheng, Elizabeth Lorang, Nima Najafi Kianfar, Stephanie Blalock, Noelle Bates, Paige Wilkinson, and Amanda J. Axley
[Whitman writes to inform Mr. Morrison that he shipped 3 volumes to him.1]
Correspondent:
The recipient of this letter was probably Byron Gordon
Morrison (1835–1920). Morrison was a native of Warren County, Pennsylvania, who lived in New
York in the early 1870s and worked as a dealer in real estate. According to the 1880 United States
Federal Census, Morrison had moved back to Pennsylvania with his wife Phebe Tripp Sherman Morrison
(1838–1912) and their four children. His occupation is listed as "oil operator."
Notes:
1. Morrison had written to Whitman on April 14, 1876, requesting Whitman's complete works to date. Morrison had enclosed a money order in the amount of $10 to pay for the books. [back]