The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to William Hawley Smith, 23 December 1890
Date: December 23, 1890
Whitman Archive ID: prc.00138
Source: Private collection of Edwin O. Grover. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 5:136. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Cristin Noonan, Amanda J. Axley, and Stephanie Blalock
Camden, New Jersey1
Dec: 23 '90
Y'rs rec'd2 to–day (with pay $6.40 safely rec'd—thanks) with order for big book3 to S. R. Henderson4 Los Angeles, Cal. just sent by mail postpaid.
Walt Whitman
Correspondent:
William Hawley Smith
(1845–1922) was an educator and the author of two science-fiction novels,
The Evolution of "Dodd" (1884) and The Promoters (1904). He published a few articles in The Conservator, including "A Visit with Walt Whitman," no. 20
(November 1909), 136; and "Walt Whitman's Contribution," no. 6 (August 1918),
75.
Notes:
1. This letter is addressed: Wm Hawley Smith. | Peoria, Illinois. [back]
2. This letter has not been located. [back]
3. Whitman's "big book" is a reference to his Complete Poems and Prose of Walt Whitman (1888). Whitman published the book himself—in an arrangement with the Philadephia publisher David McKay, who allowed Whitman to use the plates for both Leaves of Grass and Specimen Days—in December 1888. [back]
4. As yet we have no information about this person. [back]