The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to George Palmer Putnam, 17 December 1868
Date: December 17, 1868
Whitman Archive ID: owu.00019
Source: The Bayley-Whitman Collection, Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware, Ohio. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 2:75. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Kenneth M. Price, Elizabeth Lorang, Zachary King, and Eric Conrad
Attorney General's Office,
Washington
Dec. 17, 1868.
Mr. Putnam.
Dear Sir:1
Would the enclosed piece be available to you for say the March number of your monthly?
The price is $45—and 30 copies of the number in which it may be printed.
I have had it put in type for my own convenience, & to insure greater correctness.
May I ask you the favor to send me your decision within a week?
Walt Whitman
I reserve the right of printing the piece in future book.
Notes:
1. George Palmer Putnam (1814–1872) was founder and publisher of Putnam's Monthly Magazine. In January of 1868, Putnam had printed William D. O'Connor's "The Carpenter," 11 (1868), 55–90, and one of Burroughs' essays in August (Whitman recommended the essay, "A Night-Hunt in the Adirondacks," to Louisa Van Velsor Whitman in his July 17, 1868 letter). It is not known which poem Whitman submitted. [back]