The Walt Whitman Archive
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]