Walt Whitman to Bram Stoker, 6 March 1876

Complete letter text. Reading transcription: manuscript line/page breaks joined; paragraphs added for readability; later docketing and editorial footnote markers omitted.
Source: The Walt Whitman Archive, uva.00372
https://whitmanarchive.org/item/uva.00372
General editors: Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom and Kenneth M. Price.
Manuscript repository: Papers of Walt Whitman, MSS 3829, Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, Albert H. Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia.
The archive derives its text from Walt Whitman, The Correspondence, edited by Edwin Haviland Miller (New York University Press, 1964), p.28. No manuscript image is supplied in that archive record.
Consulted 7 November 2026. Original letter text is public domain; no modern editorial annotations reproduced.

431 Stevens st.
cor West.
Camden, N. Jersey, U. S. America.
March 6
76

'Bram Stoker,
My dear young man,

Your letters have been most welcome to me—welcome to me as Person, & then as Author—I don't know which most—You did well to write to me so unconventionally, so fresh, so manly, & so affectionately too. I too hope (though it is not probable) that we shall one day personally meet each other. Meantime I send you my friendship & thanks.

Edward Dowden's letter containing among others your subscription for a copy of my new edition, has just been rec'd. I shall send the books very soon by express in a package to his address. I have just written to E. D.

My physique is entirely shatter'd—doubtless permanently—from paralysis & other ailments. But I am up & dress'd, & get out every day a little—live here quite lonesome, but hearty, & good spirits.

Write to me again.

Walt Whitman