Autograph letter signed to Charles Hine. Brooklyn, 14 July 1871

In this wonderful letter to the artist Charles Hine, the poet discusses the famous portrait Hine had painted of Whitman ten years earlier. That oil painting was the basis for the engraving of Whitman published as the frontispiece in the third edition of Leaves of Grass (1860).

$15,000

Autograph note signed to Robert Watt with original albumen print photograph. No place, July 16, 1874

Mark Twain the humorist. Samuel Clemens sent this delightful humorous note with the accompanying half- length standing portrait of the debonair author.

$18,000

Autograph manuscript on Ralph Waldo Emerson. No place, [ca. 1870s]

In this fine manuscript Whitman writes, “It is very plain after reading Emerson’s forenoon essays, and then those of his elder age that the latter are not the consecutive fruits or crowning results of the former.”

$28,000

Bust portrait of Whitman wearing a hat. New York, 1878

Boldly signed and dated 1879 by Whitman. Whitman observed of this delightful portrait, “It is one of my good-humored pictures. … This is strong enough to be right and gentle enough to be right, too: I like to be both: I wouldn’t like people to say ‘he is a giant’ and then forget I know how to love.”

$7,200

Autograph letter signed to Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Camden, New Jersey, 9 August 1878

“The Good Gray Poet” to the Poet Laureate. Tennyson was the most important of of the many English literary figures who subscribed to the “Author’s Edition” of Leaves of Grass, privately issued by Whitman in 1876. Hearing that Whitman was “in great straits, almost starving,” Tennyson sent him five pounds virtually as an outright gift, rather than the more modest subscription price (Kaplan, Walt Whitman).

$60,000

Autograph letter signed to [Fanny Kellogg]. Down, Beckenham, Kent, April 13, 1879

Darwin discusses the hereditary transmission of behavior and a vivid example of the phenomenon from the opening chapter of The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.

$18,000

Autograph manuscript on Ralph Waldo Emerson. No place, n.d.

In this fine, heavily revised manuscript Whitman implicitly contrasts his poetry with that of his mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson. Whitman begins by declaring that Emerson “has not the coarse animalism or the ecstatic religious sense. But let us be thankful for what he has …” Those very elements, “coarse animalism” and an “ecstatic religious sense” were two of the elements that Whitman brought to American literature. Whitman continues,

$85,000

Original drawing of Walt Whitman. no date, no place, 19th century

This original pen and ink drawing of Walt Whitman is mounted at the front of an 1888 edition of Leaves of Grass. The likeness of a jaunty, casual, Whitman wearing his trademark slouch hat takes its cue from the famous 1855 Hollyer engraving, but here we see an older Whitman with a full beard.

$4,800

Portrait of Walt Whitman holding a butterfly. Philadelphia, [early 1880s?]

A beloved Whitman photograph, framed with a large, bold signature of the poet.

$4,500

Poems. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1882

Presentation copy inscribed by the author and artist Celia Thaxter: “Mary Mapes Dodge with much love. Illustrated by Celia Thaxter 1882.”

$22,000