Life & Letters

Correspondence

About this Item

Title: Walt Whitman to Mrs. Vine Coburn, 9 February 1882

Date: February 9, 1882

Whitman Archive ID: prc.00109

Source: The location of this manuscript is unknown. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 6:26. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.

Contributors to digital file: Alex Kinnaman and Nicole Gray




Camden New Jersey
Feb: 9 '82

My dear Madam1

Yours of 9th rec'd—I should be pleased to send you the book—the price is $2—My Photo & auto[graph] are sold by the Camden Children's Home,2 Haddon av: for their benefit, price $1—Or if you desire I can supply you with one for them—


Walt Whitman

If you send to me, please send p o order—


Notes:

1. Mrs. Vine Coburn was a member of a distinguished Maine family; see Walt Whitman Review 15 (1969), 59n. The two-volume set was sent on March 7 after Whitman's two-week stay with the Staffords (Whitman's Commonplace Book, Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). [back]

2. Whitman began to supply the Children's Home in Camden with signed photographs on November 17, 1876, and also sold them himself "for the benefit of the orphans" (Whitman's Commonplace Book). The photograph, signed "Walt Whitman 1881," is the 1872 photograph of Frank Pearsall; see frontispiece to The Correspondence (New York: New York University Press, 1961–69), vol. 2; The Artistic Legacy of Walt Whitman (1970), figure 14; and Specimen Days (1971), plate 148. [back]


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