The Walt Whitman Archive
Life & Letters
Correspondence
About this Item
Title: Charles B. Campbell to Walt Whitman, 23 June 1890
Date: June 23, 1890
Whitman Archive ID: yal.00488
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.
Related item: Whitman used the back of this letter to draft part of his essay "An Old Man's Rejoinder."
Contributors to digital file: Stephanie Blalock, Brandon James O'Neil, Marie Ernster, and Amanda J. Axley
 image 1 |  image 2 |
OFFICE OF
Chas. B. Campbell, :
Successor to C. G. Campbell & Son,
Etchings,
Photographs,
Engravings,
AND CHOICE PAINTINGS
Artistic Framing, Fine Stationery
TELEPHONE 867.
845 BROAD STREET,
Newark, N. J.,1
June 23d 1890
Mr. Walt Whitman
Camden, N. J
Dear Sir
Will you please let me know who is to publish your new book, or if it is sold by private subscription only.
I notice in the paper that you are writing a small annex to it.2 I should like to secure a copy of it.
Yours Very Truly
Chas. B. Campbell.
Correspondent:
Little is known about
Charles B. Campbell of Newark, New Jersey. He seems to have worked in or been
the proprietor of an establishment offering fine stationery, artistic framing,
and art pieces in several mediums.
Notes:
1. A line has been drawn through this letter in black ink. [back]
2. The 1891–1892 Leaves of Grass was copyrighted in 1891 and published by Phildelphia publisher David McKay in 1892. This volume, often referred to as the "deathbed" edition, reprints, with minor revisions, the 1881 text from the plates of Boston publisher James R. Osgood. Whitman also includes his two annexes in the book. The first annex, called "Sands at Seventy," consisted of sixty-five poems that had originally appeared in November Boughs (1888); while the second, "Good-Bye my Fancy," was a collection of thirty-one short poems taken from the gathering of prose and poetry published under that title by McKay in 1891, along with a prose "Preface Note to 2d Annex." Whitman concluded the 1891–92 volume with his prose essay "A Backward Glance o'er Travel'd Roads," which had originally appeared in November Boughs. For more information on this volume of Leaves, see R.W. French, "Leaves of Grass, 1891–1892, Deathbed Edition," Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia, ed. J.R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998). [back]