The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Reverend Robert Collyer, 11 May 1887
Date: May 11, 1887
Whitman Archive ID: prc.00119
Source: Private Collection: Bauman Rare Books website. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Ted Genoways (Iowa City, Iowa: University of Iowa Press, 2004), 7:87. 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 Street
Camden New Jersey1
May 11 '87
I send today by mail—same address as this—my Volume 'Leaves of Grass'—When rec'd safely will you kindly mail me a card notifying me?2
Walt Whitman
Correspondent:
Robert Collyer
(1823–1912) was born in Yorkshire, England, and emigrated to the United
States in 1837. He became a lay minister in the Methodist church but later
converted to Unitarianism and preached at various churches in Chicago. Collyer
took over the ministry of the Unitarian Church of the Messiah in New York in
1879. In 1888, Walt Whitman described to Horace Traubel an argument in which
Collyer got the better of him, conceding "Collyer's not deep but he's damned
cute" and summarized him as "a kind of reduced Beecher—a Beecher with much
of the grace lopped off" (Horace Traubel, ed., With Walt
Whitman in Camden [1906-1964], Tuesday, May 8, 1888.).
Notes:
1. This letter is addressed: Robert Collyer | New York City. [back]
2. Walt Whitman records sending "L[eaves] of G[rass] to Robt Colyer NY" on May 11, 1887, in his daybook (Daybooks and Notebooks, ed. William White [New York: New York University Press, 1977], 2:422) and later noted that the book had been acknowledged as received and paid for. [back]