The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to Richard Worthington, 21 August 1880
Date: August 21, 1880
Whitman Archive ID: wwb.00001
Source: Walt Whitman Birthplace. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 3:186. 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, Kevin McMullen, and Nicole Gray
London Ontario Canada
August 21 '80
My dear Sir1
Some six months ago, you wrote me (I was then laid up ill in St Louis) that you had purchased the electrotype plates of the 1861 Boston ed'n of my Leaves of Grass—& making me some proposals about them—To which I made answer at the time, as you probably bear in mind.
Are you still the owner of those plates? Do you still hold to the offer then made by you? Please write me here.
Walt Whitman
Notes:
1. For a discussion of the Worthington affair, see the letter from Whitman to Richard Watson Gilder of November 26, 1880, where Worthington's letter, which Whitman misinterpreted, is quoted. The poet's letter, probably written in October 1879, is not known. [back]