The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to William D. O'Connor, 22 September [1882]
Date: September 22, 1882
Whitman Archive ID: nyp.00437
Source: The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, New York Public Library. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1964), 3:305. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Kirsten Clawson, Nima Najafi Kianfar, Stefan Schöberlein, and Nicole Gray
Camden
Friday
Evn'g
Sept:
22
Dear William O'Connor
This is the best I can do about the Ruskin1—you will have to pick out from the letters (especially what I have lined with the red ink)—I get lots of letters—these are samples more or less2—I am well—(I can't send your book till Monday)—
W. W.
Notes:
1. Whitman did more; see the letter from Whitman to O'Connor of October 7, 1882. [back]
2. On September 20, O'Connor wanted to know "just what Ruskin said about L. of G., for I discover that it was to you, or some near friend of yours, that he wrote" (Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1953], 4:21). Whitman forwarded to O'Connor three letters from William Harrison Riley, dated March 5, April 2, and April 4, 1879, and one from Herbert J. Bathgate, written on January 31, 1880. Riley and Bathgate were friends of Ruskin (see Whitman's letter to Riley of March 18, 1879 and his letter to John Burroughs of February 21, 1880). O'Connor returned these letters to Whitman on August 17, 1883. O'Connor's copies are in the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection, New York Public Library. [back]