Title: Walt Whitman to James R. Osgood & Company, 10 December 1881
Date: December 10, 1881
Whitman Archive ID: yal.00113
Source: Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book
and Manuscript Library. 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.
Notes for this letter were derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller, 6 vols. (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), and supplemented, updated, or created by Whitman Archive staff as appropriate.
Contributors to digital file: Stefan Schoeberlein, Nima Najafi Kianfar, Eder Jaramillo, and Nicole Gray
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431 Stevens Street
Camden New Jersey
Dec: 10 '81
Dear Sirs
Please send me here by express fifteen free copies Leaves of Grass for my disposal to editors, for notice—will send you list as disposed—Send also in same parcel thirty sets of the sheets of the new poems printed on one side—(see that both sheets are sent)—
Then another thing: I have a few copies remaining (between one & two hundred sets) of my old $10 centennial authographic two-Volume personal edition of L of G., moderately sought after by collectors and specialists mostly in England—which I should like to sell whenever applied to—price $10—You have no objections to my selling them? I dont think it would affect the new edition the slightest unfavorably—probably indeed do more good than harm to it—but is not of much importance any how—only (to me) as putting a few dollars in my pocket now & then—which I need—
Shall not sell them if you object1—
Walt Whitman
1. The firm granted both of Whitman's requests on December 13, and included a list of thirty-eight newspapers and magazines to which review copies had been sent. [back]