Life & Letters

Correspondence

About this Item

Title: Walt Whitman to Frederick Oldach, [15 February 1889]

Date: [February 15, 1889]

Whitman Archive ID: med.00863

Source: The location of this manuscript is unknown. Miller derives his transcription from a transcription made by Horace Traubel. See With Walt Whitman in Camden, vol. 4, ed. Scully Bradley (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1953), 156. The transcription presented here is derived from The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 4:290. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.

Contributors to digital file: Blake Bronson-Bartlett, Caterina Bernardini, Stefan Schöberlein, and Stephanie Blalock




[2.15.1889]1

Mr. Oldach, Bookbinder 1215 Filbert St.
Phila.

Please put a plain strong binding on this Vol: will cost me ab't 50 or 60 cts—want something will last hard usage, especially a good durable back—No particular fancy or beauty expected. I leave it to you what style. The label for back-lettering will be found pinn'd enclosed in front of the Vol:—


W. W.

328 Mickle Street
Camden


Correspondent:
Frederick Oldach (1823–1907) was a German bookbinder whose Philadelphia firm bound Whitman's November Boughs (1888) and Complete Poems & Prose (1888), as well as the special seventieth-birthday issue of Leaves of Grass (1889).

Notes:

1. Traubel made a transcription of this letter on the day it was written. See Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, Friday, February 15, 1889[back]


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