Life & Letters

Correspondence

About this Item

Title: Walt Whitman to George Chainey, 26 June 1882

Date: June 26, 1882

Whitman Archive ID: uva.00444

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), 3:294. 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, Eder Jaramillo, and Nicole Gray




431 Stevens Street
Camden New Jersey
June 26 '82

My dear friend1

I to-day mail you a copy of "Leaves of Grass" as a little gift & testimonial of thanks. Please send me word if it is safely delivered. I sent you a little package of printed sheets last week by mail.


Walt Whitman


Notes:

1. Probably Whitman met George Chainey, the publisher of This World (Boston), in Boston in 1881. On December 22, 1881, the poet sent one of Chainey's sermons to Susan Stafford (Whitman's Commonplace Book, Charles E. Feinberg Collection of the Papers of Walt Whitman, 1839–1919, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). Chainey printed on June 17, 1882, "Keep Off the Grass," a lecture which he had delivered on June 11, as well as "To a Common Prostitute." Chainey printed Whitman's letter and one from O'Connor on July 1. Interestingly, O'Connor deplored Chainey's stupidity in a letter to Whitman on July 13, although he had been furnishing Chainey with information; see Chainey's letter to O'Connor, dated July 11 (Trent Collection, Duke University). Chainey discussed the censorship on July 1, July 6, and November 4; see Roger Asselineau, L'Évolution de Walt Whitman (1955), 250–251n. Chainey lectured on Leaves of Grass in 1884 (Whitman's Commonplace Book, June 23). [back]


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