Skip to main content

Walt Whitman to James R. Osgood & Company, 7 June 1881

 yal.00109.001_large.jpg Dear Sirs

Would you have set up for me from the copy enclosed two sample pages size of the below diagram?1 I think—am pretty sure—the book (400 pages about) will go in long primer solid. But I would like to have a sample page in bourgeois too for my calculations2—I hope it will be new type—The typographical show of my poems—how they shall show (negatively as well as absolutely) on the black & white page—is always in my idea in making them—I am printer enough for that—

Walt Whitman  yal.00109.002_large.jpg

Notes

  • 1. This page includes a pencil drawing by Whitman with the following note: "this is the size of the printed page without the folio & running title—set up a sample one page from the copy in long primer solid—Then another sample, one page, in bourgeois solid, & send me." [back]
  • 2. The firm sent on June 10 "3 sample pages of the size you indicated." [back]
Back to top