The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Sarah A. Tooley (?), 11 July 1887
Date: July 11, 1887
Whitman Archive ID: med.00802
Source: Miller derives his transcription from a manuscript that was once part of the collection of the Carl H. Pforzheimer Library. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 4:108. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Ryan Furlong, Stefan Schöberlein, Caterina Bernardini, and Stephanie Blalock
Camden New Jersey
U S America1
July 11 '87
I do not object to your quoting the lines within mention'd & hereby give permission—
Walt Whitman
Correspondent:
Sarah Anne Southall Tooley
(1857–1946) was born in Staffordshire and took classes in literature at
London University College. After her 1882 marriage to the minister George W.
Tooley, she pursued a career in journalism. She authored numerous biographical
sketches and earned a reputation as a talented interviewer who spoke to and
wrote about women working in an array of fields, including several women writers
and activists. She contributed to fin-de-siècle periodicals such as the Woman's Signal and Woman at Home,
and she is the author of The Life of Florence Nightingale
(1905) and The History of Nursing in the British Empire
(1906), among other works (Terri Doughty, "Representing the Professional Woman:
The Celebrity Interviewing of Sarah Tooley," in Women in
Journalism at the Fin de Siècle 'Making a Name for Herself', ed.
F. Elizabeth Gray [New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012], 165–181).
Notes:
1. This letter was written on the verso of a letter that reads: ". . . copyright in that country. | May I trouble you for an early reply? I am sorry that there is no way by which I can forward postage for your letter. | Yours truly | Sarah A. Tooley | Messrs Osgood & Co." Since Walt Whitman's letter is not clearly connected to the fragment of Sarah Tooley's, it is impossible to be certain that she was the recipient. Miller proposes this fragment of Tooley's letter was written in September or October 1881 when Whitman was discussing the copyright of the Osgood edition of Leaves of Grass (see Standish James O'Grady's letter to Whitman of October 5, 1881). There are at least two possible explanations: Whitman wrote a draft, an unusual procedure for such a trivial matter, or he wrote a reply on a piece of paper he found in the ever-present litter in his "den." [back]