The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to David McKay, 18 August 1884
Date: August 18, 1884
Whitman Archive ID: upa.00123
Source: Draft letter in Walt Whitman Collection, 1842–1957, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania. Transcribed from digital images or a microfilm reproduction of the original item. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Editorial note: The annotation, "[David McKay]," is in an unknown hand.
Contributors to digital file: Stefan Schöberlein, Kyle Barton, and Nicole Gray
 image 1 |  image 2 |
328 Mickle street
Camden
Aug 18 '84
Dear Sir
Please send me over [—] send right away if convenient [—] by express
package
25 Specimen Days
3 Leaves of G
2 Dr Bucke's WW
—Thirty copies altogether—which, as I make it, are yet coming to
me—
Correspondent:
David McKay (1860–1918) took
over Philadelphia-based publisher Rees Welsh's bookselling and publishing
businesses in 1881–82. McKay and Rees Welsh published the 1881 edition of
Leaves of Grass after opposition from the Boston
District Attorney prompted James R. Osgood & Company of Boston, the original publisher,
to withdraw. McKay also went on to publish Specimen Days &
Collect, November Boughs, Gems
from Walt Whitman, Complete Prose Works,
and the final Leaves of Grass, the so-called deathbed edition. For
more information about McKay, see Joel Myerson, "McKay, David (1860–1918)," Walt Whitman: An
Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1998).