The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Jacob Klein, 17 September 1888
Date: September 17, 1888
Whitman Archive ID: uva.00589
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 The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 211. For a description of the editorial rationale behind our treatment of the correspondence, see our statement of editorial policy.
Contributors to digital file: Blake Bronson-Bartlett, Stefan Schöberlein, Caterina Bernardini, and Stephanie Blalock
Camden New Jersey
Sept: 17 '881
Dear Sir
Yours just rec'd—wh' I think I cannot better than send an authentic Vol: of L of G. wh' I forward by the same mail as this—the price is $3—send by p o money order.2
Walt Whitman
Correspondent:
Jacob Klein (b. 1845) was a lawyer and, later, a Judge of the
Circuit Court in St. Louis. Klein was born in Germany, but arrived in the United
States with his parents in 1851; the family settled in St. Louis the following
year. He was educated in St. Louis public schools and at Harvard Law School. He
practiced law in St. Louis until he was elected Judge of the Circuit Court, and
he also served as a member of the faculty at the St. Louis Law School (A. J. D.
Stewart, "Jacob Klein, Saint Louis," The History of the Bench
and Bar of Missouri [St. Louis, MO.: The Legal Publishing Company,
1898], 247–249).
Notes:
1. This letter is addressed: Jacob Klein | Attorney &c: | rooms 5, 6, &7— | 506 Olive Street | St. Louis | Missouri. It is postmarked: Camden, N.J. | Sep 17 | 8 PM | 88. [back]
2. It is clear from Klein's letter to William Sloane Kennedy on September 1, 1888, that he was troubled by Kennedy's letter to the editors, "Fraudulent 'Leaves of Grass,'" about the pirated 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass, in The Critic on June 2. (Papers of Walt Whitman [MSS 3829], Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, Albert H. Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia). [back]