The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Walt Whitman to William James Linton, [13 September 1888]
Date: [September 13, 1888]
Whitman Archive ID: yal.00481
Source: Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The transcription presented here is derived from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, ed. Edwin Haviland Miller (New York: New York University Press, 1961–1977), 4:210. 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, Ryan Furlong, Ian Faith, Caterina Bernardini, and Stephanie Blalock
Camden New Jersey1
Dear friend,
If convenient please send me by mail the block of the wood engraving head—as I want to use it here at something I am printing2—
Walt Whitman
328 Mickle Street
Correspondent:
William J. Linton
(1812–1897), a British-born wood engraver, came to the United States in
1866 and settled near New Haven, Connecticut. He illustrated the works of John
Greenleaf Whittier, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William Cullen Bryant, and
others, wrote the "indispensable" History of Wood-Engraving in
America (1882), and edited Poetry of America,
1776–1876 (London, 1878), in which appeared eight of Whitman's
poems as well as a frontispiece engraving of the poet. According to his Threescore and Ten Years, 1820 to
1890—Recollections (1894), 216–217, Linton met with Whitman
in Washington and later visited him in Camden (which Whitman reported in his
November 9, 1873, letter to Peter Doyle): "I
liked the man much, a fine-natured, good-hearted, big fellow, . . . a true poet
who could not write poetry, much of
wilfulness
accounting for his neglect of form."
Notes:
1. This letter is addressed: W J Linton | p o box 489 | New Haven | Conn:. It is postmarked: Camden, N.J. | Sep 13 | 8 PM | 88; New Haven, Conn. | Sep | 14 | 8 (?)M | 188(?) | Recd. [back]
2. See Whitman's letter to Linton of March 22, 1872. Whitman was to use Linton's engraving in Complete Poems & Prose. By the time Linton received Whitman's letter, he had already sent instructions for the block to be forwarded to Arthur Stedman, an editor at Mark Twain's publishing house. See the letter from Linton to Whitman of October 3, 1888. [back]