Life & Letters

Correspondence

About this Item

Title: Walt Whitman to James R. Osgood & Company, 12 April 1882

Date: April 12, 1882

Whitman Archive ID: tex.00442

Source: T. E. Hanley Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 3:273. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.

Contributors to digital file: Stefan Schoeberlein, Nima Najafi Kianfar, Kirsten Clawson, and Nicole Gray




Camden New Jersey
April 12 '82

Dear Sirs

Yours of 10th just rec'd1—If you desire to cease to be the publishers of Leaves of Grass unless I make the excisions required by the District Attorney—if this is your settled decision—I see indeed no other way than "some reasonable arrangement for turning the plates over" to me—What is the am't of royalty due me, according to contract, from the sales altogether? & what is your valuation of the plates?


Walt Whitman


Notes:

1. Osgood & Co. wrote to Whitman on April 10: "We have laid before the District Attorney the alterations proposed by you. They are not satisfactory. . . . As we said at the outset we do not wish to go into court in connection with this case. Therefore as your views seem to be irreconcilable with those of the official authorities there seems no alternative for us but to decline to further circulate the book. We should be open to any reasonable arrangement for turning the plates over to you." On April 13 the publisher informed Whitman that the royalty due him was $405.50 and that the cost of the plates was $475. In return for a receipt for the royalty, the firm was willing to turn over to Whitman the plates, the steel portrait and 225 copies of the book in sheets. As Whitman did not reply, the firm wrote again on May 4. The poet arranged better terms in the final settlement (see the letter from Whitman to Osgood & Company of May 23, 1882). [back]


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