The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Ernest Rhys, 11 May 1887
Date: May 11, 1887
Whitman Archive ID: nyp.00580
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, 1961–1977), 6:40. 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
328 Mickle St: Camden New Jersey
U S America1
May 11 '87
Y'rs of April 28 rec'd2—but no slips of printed Preface or Additional Note yet—the P[all] M[all] Gazette rec'd—3If convenient, & as soon as convenient, I want y'r publishers to send me over fifty (50) copies of "Specimen Days"—(two or three of them in y'r good leather binding)—direct the package to me care David McKay4 23 South 9th St. Philadelphia—I will soon send some add'l papers for the Dem: Vistas Vol.
Walt Whitman
Correspondent:
Ernest Percival Rhys
(1859–1946) was a British author and editor; he founded the Everyman's
Library series of inexpensive reprintings of popular works. He included a volume
of Whitman's poems in the Canterbury Poets series and two volumes of Whitman's
prose in the Camelot series for Walter Scott publishers. For more information
about Rhys, see Joel Myerson, "Rhys, Ernest Percival (1859–1946)," Walt
Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New
York: Garland Publishing, 1998).
Notes:
1. This letter is addressed: Ernest Rhys | Care Walter Scott, Publisher | 24 Warwick Lane | London EC England. It is postmarked: Camden, N.J. | May 11 | 4 30 PM | 87. [back]
2. See Rhys's letter to Walt Whitman of April 28, 1887. [back]
3. The Pall Mall Gazette on April 27, 1887 quoted from Walt Whitman's "Additional Note." [back]
4. David McKay (1860–1918) was a Philadelphia-based publisher, whose company, founded in 1882, printed a number of books by and about Walt Whitman in the 1880s and 1890s, such as the 1891/1892 editon of Leaves of Grass, Whitman's November Boughs, and Richard Maurice Bucke's 1883 biography of the poet. [back]