The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to John Burroughs, 7 December 1880
Date: December 7, 1880
Whitman Archive ID: uva.00385
Source: Papers of Walt Whitman (MSS 3829), Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, Albert H. Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia . The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 3:199–200. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Alicia Bones, Grace Thomas, Eder Jaramillo, and Kevin McMullen
Dec: 7 '80
In the letter I sent you yesterday ab't the Worthington matter, I spoke of W probably buying with the plates a lot of the old Boston edition in sheets—Dr Bucke1 yesterday stopt at Leavitt's (the auctioneer's) in N Y. & to-day I receive from B the following postal:
"Leavitt sold the plates to a Mr Williams (for Wentworth of Boston) in Sept: 79 for $200—Leavitt never saw or heard of any sheets—Worthington must have bo't the plates from Williams—He must have printed from them
R M B"
I thought I might as well let you know every new discovery &c—and shall continue to do so—
Bitter cold here, but clear—
W W
Notes:
1. Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke was in Philadelphia on December 5, evidently on his way to New York, where he apparently investigated the Worthington matter (Whitman's Commonplace Book, Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). [back]