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• Leaves of Grass

What was Walt Whitman’s early life like?

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Walt Whitman

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• Academy of American Poets - Biography of Walt Whitman
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Walt Whitman spent his childhood in New York, where he was first employed at age 12 as a printer. He later held jobs as a newspaper editor and a schoolteacher. During this time he began publishing poems in popular magazines. The first edition of Leaves of Grass was printed in 1855.

The verse collection Leaves of Grass is Walt Whitman’s best-known work. He revised and added to the collection throughout his life, producing ultimately nine editions. The poems were written in a new form of free verse and contained controversial subject matter for which they were censured. They received little critical acclaim during his lifetime.

Walt Whitman’s poetry was innovative for its verse style and for the way it challenged traditional narratives. He championed the individual soul over social conventions, presenting himself as a rough and free spirit. His poetry has continued to resonate with new generations of Americans, and he is considered a symbol of American democracy.

Walt Whitman (born May 31, 1819, West Hills, Long Island, New York , U.S.—died March 26, 1892, Camden , New Jersey) was an American poet, journalist, and essayist whose verse collection Leaves of Grass , first published in 1855, is a landmark in the history of American literature .

Walt Whitman was born into a family that settled in North America in the first half of the 17th century. His ancestry was typical of the region: his mother, Louisa Van Velsor, was Dutch, and his father, Walter Whitman, was of English descent . They were farm people with little formal education. The Whitman family had at one time owned a large tract of land, but it was so diminished by the time Walt was born that his father had taken up carpentering, though the family still lived on a small section of the ancestral estate. In 1823 Walter Whitman, Sr., moved his growing family to Brooklyn , which was enjoying a boom. There he speculated in real estate and built cheap houses for artisans, but he was a poor manager and had difficulty in providing for his family, which increased to nine children.

Walt, the second child, attended public school in Brooklyn, began working at the age of 12, and learned the printing trade. He was employed as a printer in Brooklyn and New York City , taught in country schools on Long Island, and became a journalist. At the age of 23 he edited a daily newspaper in New York, and in 1846 he became editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, a fairly important newspaper of the time. Discharged from the Eagle early in 1848 because of his support for the Free Soil Party , a faction of antislavery Democrats and Whigs , he went to New Orleans , Louisiana, where he worked for three months on the Crescent before returning to New York via the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes . After another abortive attempt at Free Soil journalism, he built houses and dabbled in real estate in New York from about 1850 until 1855.

Whitman had spent a great deal of his 36 years walking and observing in New York City and Long Island . He had visited the theatre frequently and seen many plays of William Shakespeare , and he had developed a strong love of music, especially opera. During these years, he had also read extensively at home and in the New York libraries, and he began experimenting with a new style of poetry . While a schoolteacher, printer, and journalist, he had published sentimental stories and poems in newspapers and popular magazines, but they showed almost no literary promise.

By the spring of 1855 Whitman had enough poems in his new style for a thin volume. Unable to find a publisher, he sold a house and printed the first edition of Leaves of Grass at his own expense. No publisher’s name and no author’s name appeared on the first edition in 1855. But the cover had a portrait of Walt Whitman, “broad-shouldered, rouge-fleshed, Bacchus-browed, bearded like a satyr,” as Bronson Alcott described him in a journal entry in 1856. Though little appreciated upon its appearance, Leaves of Grass was warmly praised by the poet and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson , who wrote to Whitman on receiving the poems that it was “the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom” America had yet contributed.

Whitman continued practicing his new style of writing in his private notebooks, and in 1856 the second edition of Leaves of Grass appeared. This collection contained revisions of the poems of the first edition and a new one, the “Sun-down Poem” (later to become “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” ). The second edition was also a financial failure, and once again Whitman edited a daily newspaper, the Brooklyn Times, but was unemployed by the summer of 1859. In 1860 a Boston publisher brought out the third edition of Leaves of Grass, greatly enlarged and rearranged, but the outbreak of the American Civil War bankrupted the firm. The 1860 volume contained the “Calamus” poems, which record a personal crisis of some intensity in Whitman’s life, an apparent homosexual love affair (whether imagined or real is unknown), and “Premonition” (later entitled “Starting from Paumanok”), which records the violent emotions that often drained the poet’s strength. “A Word out of the Sea” (later entitled “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” ) evoked some sombre feelings, as did “As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life,” “Chants Democratic,” “Enfans d’Adam,” “Messenger Leaves,” and “Thoughts” were more in the poet’s earlier vein.

After the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Whitman’s brother was wounded at Fredericksburg , and Whitman went there in 1862, staying some time in the camp, then taking a temporary post in the paymaster’s office in Washington. He spent his spare time visiting wounded and dying soldiers in the Washington hospitals, spending his scanty salary on small gifts for Confederate and Union soldiers alike and offering his usual “cheer and magnetism” to try to alleviate some of the mental depression and bodily suffering he saw in the wards.

In January 1865 he became a clerk in the Department of the Interior; in May he was promoted but in June was dismissed because the secretary of the Interior thought that Leaves of Grass was indecent. Whitman then obtained a post in the attorney general’s office, largely through the efforts of his friend the journalist William O’Connor, who wrote a vindication of Whitman in The Good Gray Poet (published in 1866), which aroused sympathy for the victim of injustice.

In May 1865 a collection of war poems entitled Drum-Taps showed Whitman’s readers a new kind of poetry, in free verse , moving from the oratorical excitement with which he had greeted the falling-in and arming of the young men at the beginning of the Civil War to a disturbing awareness of what war really meant. “Beat! Beat! Drums!” echoed the bitterness of the first of the battles of Bull Run, and “Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night” had a new awareness of suffering, no less effective for its quietly plangent quality. The Sequel to Drum-Taps , published in the autumn of 1865, contained “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” his great elegy on Pres. Abraham Lincoln . Whitman’s horror at the death of democracy’s first “great martyr chief ” was matched by his revulsion from the barbarities of war. Whitman’s prose descriptions of the Civil War, published later in Specimen Days & Collect (1882–83), are no less effective in their direct, moving simplicity.

Walt Whitman

(1819-1892)

Who Was Walt Whitman?

Considered one of America's most influential poets, Walt Whitman aimed to transcend traditional epics and eschew normal aesthetic form to mirror the potential freedoms to be found in America. In 1855, he self-published the collection Leaves of Grass ; the book is now a landmark in American literature, though at the time of its publication it was considered highly controversial. Whitman later worked as a volunteer nurse during the Civil War, writing the collection Drum Taps (1865) in connection to the experiences of war-torn soldiers. Having continued to produce new editions of Leaves of Grass along with original works, Whitman died on March 26, 1892, in Camden, New Jersey.

Background and Early Years

Called the "Bard of Democracy" and considered one of America's most influential poets, Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, in West Hills, Long Island, New York. The second of Louisa Van Velsor's and Walter Whitman's eight surviving children, he grew up in a family of modest means. While earlier Whitmans had owned a large parcel of farmland, much of it had been sold off by the time he was born. As a result, Whitman's father struggled through a series of attempts to recoup some of that earlier wealth as a farmer, carpenter and real estate speculator.

At 11, Whitman was taken out of school by his father to help out with household income. He started to work as an office boy for a Brooklyn-based attorney team and eventually found employment in the printing business.

His father's increasing dependence on alcohol and conspiracy-driven politics contrasted sharply with his son's preference for a more optimistic course more in line with his mother's disposition. "I stand for the sunny point of view," he'd eventually be quoted as saying.

Opinionated Journalist

When he was 17, Whitman turned to teaching, working as an educator for five years in various parts of Long Island. Whitman generally loathed the work, especially considering the rough circumstances he was forced to teach under, and by 1841, he set his sights on journalism. In 1838, he had started a weekly called the Long Islander that quickly folded (though the publication would eventually be reborn) and later returned to New York City, where he worked on fiction and continued his newspaper career. In 1846, he became editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle , a prominent newspaper, serving in that capacity for almost two years.

Whitman proved to be a volatile journalist, with a sharp pen and a set of opinions that didn't always align with his bosses or his readers. He backed what some considered radical positions on women's property rights, immigration and labor issues. He lambasted the infatuation he saw among his fellow New Yorkers with certain European ways and wasn't afraid to go after the editors of other newspapers. Not surprisingly, his job tenure was often short and had a tarnished reputation with several different newspapers.

In 1848, Whitman left New York for New Orleans, where he became editor of the Crescent . It was a relatively short stay for Whitman—just three months—but it was where he saw for the first time the wickedness of slavery.

Whitman returned to Brooklyn in the autumn of 1848 and started a new "free soil" newspaper called the Brooklyn Freeman , which eventually became a daily despite initial challenges. Over the ensuing years, as the nation's temperature over the slavery question continued to rise, Whitman's own anger over the issue elevated as well. He often worried about the impact of slavery on the future of the country and its democracy. It was during this time that he turned to a simple 3.5 by 5.5 inch notebook, writing down his observations and shaping what would eventually be viewed as trailblazing poetic works.

'Leaves of Grass'

In the spring of 1855, Whitman, finally finding the style and voice he'd been searching for, self-published a slim collection of 12 unnamed poems with a preface titled Leaves of Grass . Whitman could only afford to print 795 copies of the book. Leaves of Grass marked a radical departure from established poetic norms. Tradition was discarded in favor of a voice that came at the reader directly, in the first person, in lines that didn't rely on rigid meter and instead exhibited an openness to playing with form while approaching prose. On the book's cover was an iconic image of the bearded poet himself.

Leaves of Grass received little attention at first, though it did catch the eye of fellow poet Ralph Waldo Emerson , who wrote Whitman to praise the collection as "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom" to come from an American pen.

The following year, Whitman published a revised edition of Leaves of Grass that featured 32 poems, including a new piece, "Sun-Down Poem" (later renamed "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry"), as well as Emerson's letter to Whitman and the poet's long response to him.

Fascinated by this newcomer to the poetry scene, writers Henry David Thoreau and Bronson Alcott ventured to Brooklyn to meet Whitman. Whitman, now living at home and truly the man of the homestead (his father passed away in 1855) resided in the attic of the family house.

By this point, Whitman's family was marked by dysfunction, inspiring a fervent need to escape home life. His heavy-drinking older brother Jesse would eventually be committed to Kings County Lunatic Asylum in 1864, while his brother Andrew was also an alcoholic. His sister Hannah was emotionally unwell and Whitman himself had to share his bed with his mentally handicapped brother.

Alcott described Whitman' as ''Bacchus-browed, bearded like a satyr, and rank" while his voice was heard as "deep, sharp, tender sometimes and almost melting."

Like its earlier edition, this second version of Leaves of Grass failed to gain much commercial traction. In 1860, a Boston publisher issued a third edition of Leaves of Grass . The revised book held some promise, and also was noted for a sensual grouping of poems—the "Children of Adam" series, which explored female-male eroticism, and the "Calamus" series, which explored intimacy between men. But the start of the Civil War drove the publishing company out of business, furthering Whitman's financial struggles as a pirated copy of Leaves came to be available for some time.

Hardships of the Civil War

In later 1862, Whitman traveled to Fredericksburg to search for his brother George, who fought for the Union and was being treated there for a wound he suffered. Whitman moved to Washington, D.C. the next year and found part-time work in the paymaster's office, spending much of the rest of his time visiting wounded soldiers.

This volunteer work proved to be both life-changing and exhausting. By his own rough estimates, Whitman made 600 hospital visits and saw anywhere from 80,000 to 100,000 patients. The work took a toll physically, but also propelled him to return to poetry.

In 1865, he published a new collection called Drum-Taps , which represented a more solemn realization of what the Civil War meant for those in the thick of it as seen with poems like "Beat! Beat! Drums!" and "Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night." A follow-up edition, Sequel , was published the same year and featured 18 new poems, including his elegy on President Abraham Lincoln , "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd.

Peter Doyle and Later Years

In the immediate years after the Civil War, Whitman continued to visit wounded veterans. Soon after the war, he met Peter Doyle, a young Confederate soldier and train car conductor. Whitman, who had a quiet history of becoming close with younger men amidst a time of great taboo around homosexuality, developed an instant and intense romantic bond with Doyle. As Whitman's health began to unravel in the 1860s, Doyle helped nurse him back to health. The two's relationship experienced a number of changes over the ensuing years, with Whitman believed to have suffered greatly from feeling rejected by Doyle, though the two would later remain friends.

In the mid-1860s, Whitman had found steady work in Washington as a clerk at the Indian Bureau of the Department of the Interior. He continued to pursue literary projects, and in 1870, he published two new collections, Democratic Vistas and Passage to India , along with a fifth edition of Leaves of Grass .

But in 1873 his life took a dramatic turn for the worse. In January of that year, he suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. In May he traveled to Camden, New Jersey, to see his ailing mother, who died just three days after his arrival. Frail himself, Whitman found it impossible to continue with his job in Washington and relocated to Camden to live with his brother George and sister-in-law Lou.

Over the next two decades, Whitman continued to tinker with Leaves of Grass . An 1882 edition of the collection earned the poet some fresh newspaper coverage after a Boston district attorney objected to and blocked its publication. That, in turn, resulted in robust sales, enough so that Whitman was able to buy a modest house of his own in Camden.

These final years proved to be both fruitful and frustrating for Whitman. His life's work received much-needed validation in terms of recognition, especially overseas, as over the course of his career many of his contemporaries had viewed his output as prurient, distasteful and unsophisticated. Yet even as Whitman felt new appreciation, the America he saw emerge from the Civil War disappointed him. His health, too, continued to deteriorate.

Death and Legacy

On March 26, 1892, Whitman passed away in Camden. Right up until the end, he'd continued to work with Leaves of Grass , which during his lifetime had gone through many editions and expanded to some 300 poems. Whitman's final book, Good-Bye, My Fancy , was published the year before his death. He was buried in a large mausoleum he had built in Camden's Harleigh Cemetery.

Despite the previous outcry surrounding his work, Whitman is considered one of America's most groundbreaking poets, having inspired an array of dedicated scholarship and media that continues to grow. Books on the writer include the award-winning Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography (1995), by David S. Reynolds, and W alt Whitman: The Song of Himself (1999), by Jerome Loving.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Walt Whitman
• Birth Year: 1819
• Birth date: May 31, 1819
• Birth State: New York
• Birth City: West Hills
• Birth Country: United States
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Walt Whitman was an American poet whose verse collection 'Leaves of Grass' is a landmark in the history of American literature.
• Journalism and Nonfiction
• Fiction and Poetry
• Astrological Sign: Gemini
• Death Year: 1892
• Death date: March 26, 1892
• Death State: New Jersey
• Death City: Camden
• Death Country: United States

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CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Walt Whitman Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/authors-writers/walt-whitman
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• Last Updated: September 15, 2022
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014
• I am as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best.
• Have you learned lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who rejected you, and braced themselves against you, or disputed the passage with you?
• I celebrate myself, and sing myself,And what I assume you shall assume,For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
• I sing the body electric,The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.
• I think I could turn and live with the animals. They are so placid and self-contained. They do not sweat and whine about their condition. Not one is dissatisfied. Not one is demented with the mania of owning things. Not one is disrespectful or unhappy over the world.

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Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, in West Hills, on Long Island, New York. He was the second son of Walter Whitman, a house-builder, and Louisa Van Velsor. In the 1820s and 1830s, the family, which consisted of nine children, lived in Long Island and Brooklyn, where Whitman attended the Brooklyn public schools.

At the age of twelve, Whitman began to learn the printer’s trade and fell in love with the written word. Largely self-taught, he read voraciously, becoming acquainted with the works of  Homer ,  Dante ,  Shakespeare , and the Bible.

Whitman worked as a printer in New York City until a devastating fire in the printing district demolished the industry. In 1836, at the age of seventeen, he began his career as teacher in the one-room schoolhouses of Long Island. He continued to teach until 1841, when he turned to journalism as a full-time career. He founded a weekly newspaper, The Long-Islander , and later edited a number of Brooklyn and New York papers, including the Brooklyn Daily Eagle . In 1848, Whitman left the Brooklyn Daily Eagle to become editor of the New Orleans Crescent for three months. After witnessing the auctions of enslaved individuals in New Orleans, he returned to Brooklyn in the fall of 1848 and co-founded a “free soil” newspaper, the Brooklyn Freeman , which he edited through the next fall. Whitman’s attitudes about race have been described as “ unstable and inconsistent .” He did not always side with the abolitionists , yet he celebrated human dignity.

In Brooklyn, Whitman continued to develop the unique style of poetry that later so astonished Ralph Waldo Emerson . In 1855, Whitman took out a copyright on the first edition of Leaves of Grass , which consisted of twelve untitled poems and a preface. He published the volume himself, and sent a copy to Emerson in July of 1855. Whitman released a second edition of the book in 1856, containing thirty-two poems, a letter from Emerson praising the first edition, and a long open letter by Whitman in response. During his lifetime, Whitman continued to refine the volume, publishing several more editions of the book. Noted Whitman scholar, M. Jimmie Killingsworth writes that “the ‘merge,’ as Whitman conceived it, is the tendency of the individual self to overcome moral, psychological, and political boundaries. Thematically and poetically, the notion dominates the three major poems of 1855: ‘ I Sing the Body Electric ,’ ‘ The Sleepers ,’ and ‘Song of Myself,’ all of which were merged in the first edition under the single title ‘Leaves of Grass’ but were demarcated by clear breaks in the text and the repetition of the title.”

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Whitman vowed to live a “purged” and “cleansed” life. He worked as a freelance journalist and visited the wounded at New York City–area hospitals. He then traveled to Washington, D.C. in December 1862 to care for his brother, who had been wounded in the war.

Overcome by the suffering of the many wounded in Washington, Whitman decided to stay and work in the hospitals; he ended up staying in the city for eleven years. He took a job as a clerk for the Bureau of Indian Affairs within the Department of the Interior, which ended when the Secretary of the Interior, James Harlan, discovered that Whitman was the author of  Leaves of Grass , which Harlan found offensive. After Harlan fired him, he went on to work in the attorney general's office.

In 1873, Whitman suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. A few months later he travelled to Camden, New Jersey, to visit his dying mother at his brother’s house. He ended up staying with his brother until the 1882 publication of  Leaves of Grass  (James R. Osgood), which brought him enough money to buy a home in Camden.

In the simple two-story clapboard house, Whitman spent his declining years working on additions and revisions to his deathbed edition of  Leaves of Grass  (David McKay, 1891–92) and preparing his final volume of poems and prose,  Good-Bye My Fancy  (David McKay, 1891). After his death on March 26, 1892, Whitman was buried in a tomb he designed and had built on a lot in Harleigh Cemetery.

Along with  Emily Dickinson , he is considered one of America’s most important poets.

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Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman is America’s world poet—a latter-day successor to Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Shakespeare. In Leaves of Grass (1855, 1891-2), he celebrated democracy, nature, love, and friendship. This monumental work chanted praises to the body as well as to the soul, and found beauty and reassurance even in death. Along with Emily Dickinson , Whitman is regarded as one of America’s most significant 19th-century poets and would influence later many poets, including Ezra Pound , William Carlos Williams , Allen Ginsberg , Simon Ortiz , C.K. Williams , and Martín Espada .

Born on Long Island, Whitman grew up in Brooklyn and received limited formal education. His occupations during his lifetime included printer, schoolteacher, reporter, and editor. Whitman’s self-published Leaves of Grass was inspired in part by his travels through the American frontier and by his admiration for Ralph Waldo Emerson . This important publication underwent eight subsequent editions during his lifetime as Whitman expanded and revised the poetry and added more to the original collection of 12 poems. Emerson himself declared the first edition was “the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed.” Whitman published his own enthusiastic review of Leaves of Grass . Critics and readers alike, however, found both Whitman’s style and subject matter unnerving. According to The Longman Anthology of Poetry , “Whitman received little public acclaim for his poems during his lifetime for several reasons:  this openness regarding sex, his self-presentation as a rough working man, and his stylistic innovations.” A poet who “abandoned the regular meter and rhyme patterns” of his contemporaries, Whitman was “influenced by the long cadences and rhetorical strategies of Biblical poetry.” Upon publishing Leaves of Grass , Whitman was subsequently fired from his job with the Department of the Interior. Despite his mixed critical reception in the US, he was favorably received in England, with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Algernon Charles Swinburne among the British writers who celebrated his work. During the Civil War, Whitman worked as a clerk in Washington, DC. For three years, he visited soldiers during his spare time, dressing wounds and giving solace to the injured. These experiences led to the poems in his 1865 publication, Drum-Taps , which includes, “ When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d ,” Whitman’s elegy for President Lincoln. After suffering a serious stroke in 1873, Whitman moved to his brother’s home in Camden, New Jersey. While his poetry failed to garner popular attention from his American readership during his lifetime, over 1,000 people came to view his funeral. And as the first writer of a truly American poetry, Whitman’s legacy endures. You can read and inspect many of Whitman's books, letters, and manuscripts at the Walt Whitman Archive , a digital edition at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, directed by Ed Folsom and Kenneth M. Price. 

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Biography Online

Walt Whitman Biography

Short bio Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman was born in West Hills, Long Island, US on May 31, 1819. He was the second child in a family of eleven. His parents were Walter Whitman, a housebuilder, and Louisa Van Velsor. Whitman grew up in the Brooklyn district of New York and Long Island. At the age of twelve, Whitman began learning to work as a printer. It was around this time that he discovered a great passion for literature. Largely self-taught, he read voraciously, including works by the great classic writers – Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and the Bible. After a devastating fire in the printing district of New York, Whitman was left without a job, But, in 1836, at the age of 17, he began his career as a teacher in the one-room school houses of Long Island. He continued to teach until 1841 when he turned to journalism as a full-time career. He founded a weekly newspaper, Long-Islander, and later edited a number of Brooklyn and New York papers. In 1848, Whitman left the Brooklyn Daily Eagle to become editor of the New Orleans Crescent. In New Orleans, he became witness to the practice of slavery in the city and was repulsed by what he saw. Whitman opposed the extension of slavery, though did not always support the abolitionists, over concerns about their commitment to democracy. He closely followed politics throughout his life.

He returned to Brooklyn in the fall of 1848, where he founded a “free soil” newspaper, the Brooklyn Freeman. As well as journalism, Whitman became absorbed in poetry, writing a unique and distinctive style. In 1855, he finished his seminal work ‘Leaves of Grass’, which consisted of twelve sections.

I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

– Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman

He published the volume himself and sent a copy to Ralph Waldo Emerson in July of 1855. Emerson was one of America’s leading writers and free thinkers. He was astonished by the unique style of Whitman.

“I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of “Leaves of Grass.” I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed. I am very happy in reading it, as great power makes us happy.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson to Walt Whitman 1855.

Walt Whitman, aged 35.

He praised the volume extensively, and this helped Whitman gain greater recognition. In 1856, he released a second edition, containing thirty-three poems, a letter from Emerson praising the first edition, and a long open letter by Whitman in response. During his subsequent career, Whitman continued to refine the volume, publishing several more editions of the book.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Whitman wrote “Beat! Beat! Drums!” a patriotic poem and rally call for the North. During the war, he wrote freelance journalism and visited the wounded around New York hospitals. In 1862, he traveled to Washington, D.C. to care for his brother who had been wounded in the war. Overcome by the suffering of the many wounded in Washington, Whitman decided to stay and work in the hospitals. His war time experiences left a profound mark on Whitman. He wrote

…I dress the perforated shoulder, the foot with the bullet-wound, Cleanse the one with a gnawing and putrid gangrene, so sickening, so offensive, While the attendant stands behind aside me holding the tray and pail…

– Walt Whitman, The Wound Dresser

However, despite his first hand witness of human suffering, Whitman’s poetry always contained all range of human emotions. He also wrote of joy and the unending capacity of the human spirit.

“O the joy of that vast elemental sympathy which only the human soul is capable of generating and emitting in steady and limitless floods.”

– Walt Whitman, A Song of Joys

Whitman stayed in the city for eleven years. He took a job as a clerk for the Department of the Interior, which ended when the Secretary of the Interior, James Harlan, discovered that Whitman was the author of Leaves of Grass , which Harlan found offensive. Harlan fired the poet.

Whitman struggled to support himself through most of his life. In Washington he lived on a clerk’s salary and modest royalties, and spent any excess money, including gifts from friends, to buy supplies for the patients he nursed. He had also been sending money to his widowed mother and an invalid brother. From time to time, writers both in the states and in England sent him “purses” of money so that he could get by.

Walt Whitman was heavily influenced by Deism – a belief in God without needing an organised religion. In his writings, he suggested that all religions were valid, but he himself did not adhere to one particular creed. This underlying oneness of the Universe is a recurrent theme of Whitman’s poetry.

“Come said the Muse, Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted, Sing me the universal. In this broad earth of ours, Amid the measureless grossness and the slag, Enclosed and safe within its central heart, Nestles the seed perfection.”

– Song of the Universal , Walt Whitman

In the early 1870s, Whitman settled in Camden, where he had come to visit his dying mother at his brother’s house. However, after suffering a stroke, Whitman found it impossible to return to Washington. He stayed with his brother until the 1882 publication of Leaves of Grass gave Whitman enough money to buy a home in Camden. In the simple two-story clapboard house, Whitman spent his declining years working on additions and revisions to a new edition of the book and preparing his final volume of poems and prose, Good-Bye, My Fancy (1891). After his death on March 26, 1892, Whitman was buried in a tomb he designed and had built on a lot in Harleigh Cemetery.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “Biography of Walt Whitman”, Oxford, UK.  www.biographyonline.net , 22nd Jan. 2010. Last updated 10 February 2018.

The Complete Works of Walt Whitman

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Whitman Illuminated: Song of Myself

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Walt whitman's life.

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May 31, 1819 Walt Whitman is born to Louisa and Walter Whitman in Huntington Township on Long Island, New York. He is the second of eight surviving children. His father will struggle to support the family as a farmer, a carpenter, and an unsuccessful real estate speculator.

May 27, 1823 Whitman's family moves to Brooklyn, across the East River from New York City.

1831-1836 Whitman's father takes young Walt out of school at age 11 to help support the family; he has attained more formal schooling than either of his parents. He finds work as an office boy, and then apprentices as a printer for a local newspaper. In 1833, his family moves back to Long Island. Whitman works at several newspapers in Brooklyn, Long Island and New York City.

1836-1841 Whitman teaches school on Long Island. He stops teaching from 1838-39 to publish a weekly newspaper, the  Long Islander .

1841-1845 Whitman moves back to New York City to work as a printer. He also begins publishing fiction and poetry, as well as journalistic pieces, in newspapers and journals. In 1842 his didactic temperance novel,  Franklin Evans, or the Inebriate , appears in print. He stakes out radical positions on labor issues, women's property rights, capital punishment and immigration — putting him in near constant opposition to society's prevailing sentiments. In just four years in Manhattan, Whitman works briefly at the  Tattler , the  Daily Plebeian , the  Statesman , the  Mirror , the  Democrat , the  Sun  and the  Star .

1845-1848 Whitman moves back to Brooklyn and writes for newspapers there.

February Whitman and his brother Jeff travel to New Orleans. Whitman has been offered a job at the New Orleans  Crescent . His stay will be brief; by May he will resign and return to Brooklyn.

1848-1849 Whitman founds and edits the Brooklyn  Weekly Freeman , which advocates the "free soil" position that new states entering the Union should declare slavery illegal.

1850-1854 Whitman runs a printing office and stationery store, and also does freelance writing and house building.

1855 Engraving of Walt Whitman, frontispiece to  Leaves of Grass , 1855. Library of Congress

May 15 Brooklyn printer Andrew Rome prints the first edition of   Leaves of Grass . (There is no credited author, although Whitman is named in a poem and is credited on the copyright page.) Whitman himself helps set some of the type.

July 11 Whitman's father dies.

1856 Whitman writes for  Life Illustrated , and publishes a second edition of  Leaves of Grass .

1857-1859 Whitman edits the Brooklyn  Times . Much of his spare time in this period is spent at Pfaff's, a restaurant in lower Manhattan favored by bohemian artists and writers.

1860 The third edition of  Leaves of Grass  is published in Boston. In Massachusetts to see his new publisher, Whitman also visits with his literary hero, Ralph Waldo Emerson.

1861 The Civil War begins. Whitman's younger brother George joins the Union Army.

1862 George Whitman, in his Union army uniform, c1862. Rare Book, Manuscript, Special Collections Library, Duke University

December Whitman travels to Fredericksburg, Virginia, after George Whitman appears on a list of wounded soldiers in the newspaper. George's injury is minor and he will continue to serve in the Army.

1863-1864 Finding he has a talent and desire to give comfort to wounded soldiers, Whitman relocates to Washington, D.C. and makes the rounds of the local military hospitals. He gets a part time job at the Army Paymaster's Office to pay for his modest rented room.

January 24, 1865 Whitman takes a job at the Department of the Interior.

March 4 "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds. ... " Whitman watches President Abraham Lincoln give his second inaugural address.

April 14 During the performance of a comedic play at Ford's Theatre, John Wilkes Booth assassinates President Lincoln.

June 30 After his supervisor reads  Leaves of Grass , Whitman is fired from his job at Interior. He finds a new job at the attorney general's office.

October Whitman publishes  Drum-Taps , a book of poems on the subject of the Civil War and  Sequel , containing a new poem inspired by Lincoln, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd."

Autumn Whitman meets and begins a relationship with a trolley conductor named Peter Doyle. Doyle was in the audience at Ford's Theatre on the night of Lincoln's assassination and gives Whitman a first-hand account.

1867 Whitman publishes his fourth edition of  Leaves of Grass .

1870 After a move back to Brooklyn, Whitman publishes the fifth edition of  Leaves of Grass ,  Democratic Vistas , and  Passage to India ; all are dated 1871.

January 23, 1873 Whitman suffers a stroke, debilitating his left arm and leg. He intends to stay temporarily with his brother George in Camden, New Jersey; he occupies the rooms of his mother, who has recently died.

1875 A second stroke affects the right side of Whitman's body.

1876 On the American Centennial, a special commemorative edition of  Leaves of Grass  is published, as well as the collection  Two Rivulets .

1881 Yet another edition of  Leaves of Grass  is published, this time in Boston.

1882 The district attorney in Boston threatens to prosecute Whitman's Boston publisher unless certain "obscene" sections of  Leaves of Grass  are edited out. Whitman finds a publisher in Philadelphia who is willing to publish and distribute the unexpurgated book.

April 14, 1887 Whitman appears on stage in New York to give a lecture on President Lincoln. Among the celebrities in attendance are writer Mark Twain, author and future secretary of state John Hay, U.S. Army commander William Tecumseh Sherman and sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens.

1888 November Boughs  is published. The poems in this collection will later be appended to printings of  Leaves of Grass .

1889 Whitman's friends and disciples organize a seventieth-birthday dinner celebration for the poet, featuring mailed-in greetings from literary notables including Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Hamlin Garland.

1891-1892 Realizing he has just a little more time to consolidate his legacy, Whitman revises his signature work one last time by adding some "annexes" to his 1881 edition. The final version of  Leaves of Grass  is also known as the "death-bed edition."

March 26,  1892   Whitman dies and is buried in Harleigh Cemetery in Camden, New Jersey.

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Biography of Walt Whitman, American Poet

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Walt Whitman (May 31, 1819–March 26, 1892) is one of the most significant American writers of the 19th century, and many critics consider him the nation's greatest poet. His book "Leaves of Grass," which he edited and expanded over the course of his life, is a masterpiece of American literature. In addition to writing poetry, Whitman worked as a journalist and volunteered in military hospitals .

Fast Facts: Walt Whitman

• Known For : Whitman is one of the most famous American poets of the 19th century.
• Born : May 31, 1819 in West Hills, New York
• Died : March 26, 1892 in Camden, New Jersey
• Published Works : Leaves of Grass, Drum-Taps, Democratic Vistas

Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, in the village of West Hills on Long Island, New York, approximately 50 miles east of New York City. He was the second of eight children. Whitman’s father was of English descent, and his mother was Dutch. In later life, he would refer to his ancestors as having been early settlers of Long Island.

In 1822, when Walt was 2 years old, the Whitman family moved to Brooklyn, which was still a small town. Whitman would spend most of the next 40 years of his life in Brooklyn, which grew into a thriving city during that time.

After finishing public school in Brooklyn, Whitman began working at the age of 11. He was an office boy for a law office before becoming an apprentice printer at a newspaper. In his late teens, Whitman worked for several years as a schoolteacher in rural Long Island. In 1838, he founded a weekly newspaper on Long Island. He reported and wrote stories, printed the paper, and even delivered it on horseback. By the early 1840s, he had broken into professional journalism , writing articles for magazines and newspapers in New York.

Early Writings

Early writing efforts by Whitman were fairly conventional. He wrote about popular trends and contributed sketches about city life. In 1842, he wrote the temperance novel "Franklin Evans," which depicted the horrors of alcoholism. In later life, Whitman would denounce the novel as “rot,” but at the time it was a commercial success.

In the mid-1840s, Whitman became the editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle , but his political views, which were aligned with the upstart  Free Soil Party , eventually got him fired. He then took a job working at a newspaper in New Orleans. While he seemed to enjoy the exotic nature of the city, he was apparently homesick for Brooklyn. The job only lasted a few months.

By the early  1850s  he was still writing for newspapers, but his focus had turned to poetry. He often jotted down notes for poems inspired by the busy city life around him.

'Leaves of Grass'

In 1855, Whitman published the first edition of "Leaves of Grass." The book was unusual, as the 12 poems it included were untitled and were set in type (partly by Whitman himself) that looked more like prose than poetry.

Whitman had written a lengthy and remarkable preface, essentially introducing himself as an "American bard." For the frontispiece, he selected an engraving of himself dressed as a common worker. The green covers of the book were embossed with the title “Leaves of Grass.” Curiously, the title page of the book, perhaps because of an oversight, did not contain the author's name.

The poems in the original edition were inspired by the things Whitman found fascinating: the crowds of New York, the modern inventions the public marveled over, and the raucous politics of the 1850s. While Whitman apparently hoped to become the poet of the common man, his book went largely unnoticed.

However, "Leaves of Grass" did attract one major fan. Whitman admired the writer and speaker Ralph Waldo Emerson and sent him a copy of his book. Emerson read it, was greatly impressed, and wrote a letter to Whitman: "I greet you at the beginning of a great career."

Whitman produced approximately 800 copies of the first edition of "Leaves of Grass," and the following year he published a second edition, which contained 20 additional poems.

Evolution of 'Leaves of Grass'

Whitman saw "Leaves of Grass" as his life’s work. Rather than publishing new books of poems, he began a practice of revising the poems in the book and adding new ones in successive editions.

The third edition of the book was issued by a Boston publishing house, Thayer and Eldridge. Whitman traveled to Boston to spend three months in 1860 preparing the book, which contained more than 400 pages of poetry. Some of the poems in the 1860 edition referred to homosexuality, and while the poems were not explicit, they were nonetheless controversial.

In 1861 during the beginning of the Civil War, Whitman’s brother George enlisted in a New York infantry regiment. In December 1862, Walt, believing his brother may have been wounded at the  Battle of Fredericksburg , traveled to the front in Virginia.

The proximity to the war, to soldiers, and especially to the wounded had a profound effect on Whitman. He became deeply interested in helping the wounded and began volunteering in military hospitals in Washington. His visits with wounded soldiers would inspire a number of Civil War poems, which he would eventually collect in a book called "Drum-Taps."

As he traveled around Washington, Whitman would often see Abraham Lincoln passing by in his carriage. He had a deep respect for Lincoln and attended the president's second inauguration on March 4, 1865.

Whitman wrote an essay about the inauguration, which was published in The New York Times on Sunday, March 12, 1865. In his dispatch, Whitman noted, as others had, that the day had been stormy up until noon, when Lincoln was scheduled to take the oath of office for the second time. But Whitman added a poetic touch, noting that a peculiar cloud had appeared over Lincoln that day:

"As the President came out on the Capitol portico, a curious little white cloud, the only one in that part of the sky, appeared like a hovering bird, right over him."

Whitman saw significance in the odd weather and speculated that it was a profound omen of some sort. Within weeks, Lincoln would be dead, killed by an assassin (who also happened to be in the crowd at the second inauguration).

By the end of the Civil War, Whitman had found a comfortable job working as a clerk in a government office in Washington. That came to an end when the newly installed secretary of the interior, James Harlan, discovered that his office employed the author of "Leaves of Grass."

With the intercession of friends, Whitman got another federal job, this time serving as a clerk in the Department of Justice. He remained in government work until 1874, when ill health led him to resign.

Whitman’s problems with Harlan actually may have helped him in the long run, as some critics came to his defense. As later editions of "Leaves of Grass" appeared, Whitman became known as “America’s good gray poet.”

Plagued by health problems, Whitman moved to Camden, New Jersey, in the mid-1870s. When he died on March 26, 1892, the news of his death was widely reported. The San Francisco Call , in an obituary published on the front page of the March 27, 1892, paper, wrote:

“Early in life he decided that his mission should be to 'preach the gospel of democracy and of the natural man,' and he schooled himself for the work by passing all his available time among men and women and in the open air, absorbing into himself nature, character, art and indeed all that makes up the eternal universe.”

Whitman was interred in a tomb of his own design in Harleigh Cemetery in Camden, New Jersey.

Whitman’s poetry was revolutionary, both in subject and style. Though considered eccentric and controversial, he eventually became known as “America’s good gray poet.” When he died in 1892 at the age of 72, his death was front-page news across America. Whitman is now celebrated as one of the country's greatest poets, and selections from "Leaves of Grass" are widely taught in schools and universities.

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About Whitman

The early years.

Walt Whitman was born, the second of nine children, in Huntington, Long Island, New York, on May 31, 1819. His ancestors and family had lived in the West Hills area of South Huntington for over 125 years. Walt Whitman’s Birthplace, a State Historic Site listed on the National Register of Historic Places, still stands and commemorates his nativity. The farmhouse was constructed by the poet’s father Walter Whitman Sr.—a house builder—prior to his marriage to Louisa Van Velsor in 1816.

During 1823, the family moved to the city of Brooklyn where Walter Sr. continued building houses to support the growing family. Although Walt Jr., the poet, attended grammar school, he took his first job at age twelve as a printer’s devil at  The Long Island Patriot . A voracious reader, he was largely self-educated, and by 1835 was a printer in New York City. An economic depression and lack of opportunity in the newspaper field, however, forced him to return to Long Island where he remained  until 1841. During this time he commenced a series of teaching positions in eight different school districts throughout the western half of Long Island. However, he continued to pursue his literary and journalistic interests by dabbling in conventional poetry, short stories, and a novel. He also founded Huntington’s weekly newspaper, The Long-Islander  in 1838, but then sold the business a year later.

After 1841, Whitman returned to journalism as a full time career until 1859. He held editorial positions on seven different newspapers; four of them on Long Island, two in New York City, and one as far away as New Orleans. In all of these positions he was an outspoken advocate of social, economic, and political reform in both local and national issues. The local papers were The Long Island Star , 1845;  The Brooklyn Weekly Eagle , 1846-1848;  The Brooklyn Freeman , 1848–1849; and the Brooklyn Daily Times , 1857–1859.

LEAVES OF GRASS

During the spring of 1855 Whitman published the first edition of  Leaves of Grass . It was a thin volume of poems written in a highly innovative style. Unable to find a publisher, he employed his Brooklyn friends, the Rome brothers, to print it. The book was advertised and distributed by Fowler and Wells of New York City. Although it did not sell well, it was praised by noted intellectuals such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and found acceptance among progressively minded Americans. The book contained twelve untitled poems, the first of which later became “Song of Myself”. In this poem, Whitman used his own individuality as a measure of self, presenting his own soaring spirit as synonymous with that of the American people. He was a personal as well as a political poet.

Leaves of Grass never became part of any literary establishment. It seemed strange to most of the poet’s contemporaries; but today it is considered a masterpiece of world literature. It has been translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Ukrainian, Japanese, and Chinese. The book is a poetic summary of Whitman and his fellow Americans; true American poetry without any European inspiration. Between 1855 and 1892 it went through six editions and nine successive printings during his lifetime. In each edition Whitman made alterations or deletions, but the book grew apace with the nation.

THE CIVIL WAR and WASHINGTON YEARS

At the beginning of the American Civil War, upon learning that his brother George Washington Whitman had been wounded, Walt left Brooklyn to search for him among the field hospitals of Fredericksburg, Virginia. Shocked by the plight of the wounded, he changed his residence to Washington D.C. and secured a civil service post in the Department of the Interior. This allowed him, over the course of the war, to make over 600 visits to the military hospitals around the capital to comfort and care for the wounded as a hospital volunteer. Walt lived in the nation’s capital until a stroke forced him to move close to his brother George and his family in Camden, New Jersey in 1873. His experiences in Washington provided him with material for a new addition to Leaves of Grass entitled “Drum Taps”, and changed his poetic focus. He was no longer just a poet from New York or Long Island; he now belonged to and spoke for the nation.

LATER YEARS

Walt spent the remainder of his life in Camden, New Jersey. The 1881 seventh printing of Leaves of Grass sold well and allowed him to purchase a house on Mickle Street. Walt filled his time with travel, revising Leaves of Grass, overseeing new prose and poetry with the help of friends such as Horace Traubel. He corresponded with and received visits from international literary personages such as Alfred Lord Tennyson, England’s Poet Laureate; Bram Stoker, author of Dracula; and poet & playwright Oscar Wilde. His final edition of Leaves of Grass appeared in 1892, the same year he died. By the end of his life, Whitman had become the first American poet to achieve international acclaim. Today his poetry is available in every major language and continues to inspire people worldwide who find in Whitman the voice and vision of a truly international humanist.

Research Archives and Educational Information

The Interpretive Center at the Walt Whitman Birthplace State Historic Site houses the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association’s archives and library. The WWBA library contains over 1800 volumes of books, manuscripts, periodicals, and letters related to Walt Whitman. The library and archives are made available to students and researchers through a scheduled appointment. If you are interested in making use of the WWBA library and archives, please contact the curator, Margaret Guardi at 631-427-5240. 

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Walt Whitman was born, the second of nine children, in Huntington, Long Island, New York, on May 31, 1819. His ancestors and family had lived in the West Hills area of South Huntington for over 125 years. Walt Whitman’s Birthplace, a State Historic Site listed on the National Register of Historic Places, still stands and commemorates his nativity. The farmhouse was constructed by the poet’s father Walter Whitman Sr., a house builder, upon his marriage to Louisa Van Velsor in 1816.

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Walt whitman biography.

Walt Whitman (Walter Whitman), 1819-92, American poet, b. West Hills, N.Y. Considered by many to be the greatest of all American poets, Whitman celebrated the freedom and dignity of the individual and sang the praises of democracy and the brotherhood of man. His Leaves of Grass , unconventional in both content and technique, is probably the most influential volume of poems in the history of American literature.

Whitman left school in 1830, worked as a printer’s devil and later as a compositor. In 1838-39 he taught school on Long Island and edited the Long Islander newspaper. By 1841 he had become a full-time journalist, editing successively several papers and writing prose and verse for New York and Brooklyn journals. His active interest in politics during this period led to the editorship of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle , a Democratic party paper; he lost this job, however, because of his vehement advocacy of abolition and the “free-soil” movement. After a brief trip to New Orleans in 1848, Whitman returned to Brooklyn, continued as a journalist, and later worked as a carpenter.

Leaves of Grass

In 1855 Whitman published at his own expense a volume of 12 poems, Leaves of Grass , which he had begun working on probably as early as 1847. Prefaced by a statement of his theories of poetry, the volume included the poem later known as “Song of Myself,” in which the author proclaims himself the symbolic representative of common people. Although the book was a commercial failure, critical reviewers recognized the appearance of a bold new voice in poetry. Two larger editions appeared in 1856 and 1860, and they had equally little public success. Leaves of Grass was criticized because of Whitman’s exaltation of the body and sexual love and also because of its innovation in verse form–that it, the use of free verse in long rhythmical lines with a natural, “organic” structure. Emerson was one of the few intellectuals to praise Whitman’s work, writing him a famous congratulatory letter. Whitman continued to enlarge and revise further editions of Leaves of Grass ; the last edition prepared under his supervision appeared in 1892.

Later Life and Works

From 1862 to 1865 Whitman worked as a volunteer hospital nurse in Washington. His poetry of the Civil War, Drum-Taps (1865), reissued with Sequel to Drum-Taps (1865-66), included his two poems about Abraham Lincoln, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” considered one of the finest elegies in the English language, and the much-recited “O Captain! My Captain!” For a while Whitman served as a clerk in the Dept. of the Interior, but he was discharged because Leaves of Grass was considered an immoral book. In 1873 Whitman suffered a paralytic stroke and afterward lived in a semi-invalid state. His prose collection Democratic Vistas had appeared in 1871, and his last long poem, “Passage to India,” was published in the 1871 edition of Leaves of Grass . From 1884 until his death he lived in Camden, N.J., where he continued to write and to revise his earlier work. His last book, November Boughs , appeared in 1888.

Whitman was a complex person. He saw himself as the full-blooded, rough-and-ready spokesman for a young democracy, and he cultivated a bearded, shaggy appearance. Indeed, Whitman’s early biographers John Burroughs and R. M. Bucke were so affected by the robust “I” of Whitman’s poems and by the poet himself that they depicted him as a rowdy, sensual man, a great lover of women, and the father of several illegitimate children. Most of this was false. In reality Whitman was a quiet, gentle, circumspect man, robust in youth but sickly in middle age, who sired no children and is generally acknowledged to have been homosexual. Whitman had an incalculable effect on later poets, inspiring them to experiment in prosody as well as in subject matter.

Bibliography

See T. L. Brasher, ed., Early Poems and Fiction (1963) and H. W. Blodgett and S. Bradley, ed., Leaves of Grass (1965); his published prose , ed. by F. Stovall (2 vol., 1963-64); his uncollected prose , ed. by E. F. Grier et al. (6 vol., 1984); his daybooks and notebooks , ed. by W. White (3 vol., 1978); Collected Poetry and Prose (1982); his correspondence , ed. by E. H. Miller (6 vol., 1961-77); G. W. Allen, New Walt Whitman Handbook (1986); biographies by G. W. Allen (1955, rev. ed. 1969), J. Kaplan (1986), and J. Loving (1999); P. Zweig, Walt Whitman: The Making of a Poet (1984); D. S. Reynolds, Walt Whitman’s America (1995)

Reference: The Columbia Encyclopedia , Sixth Edition 2001

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Walt Whitman: To the Soul

• World Biography

Walt Whitman Biography

Born: May 31, 1819 West Hills, New York Died: March 26, 1892 Camden, New Jersey American poet

Walt Whitman is generally considered to be the most important American poet of the nineteenth century. He wrote in free verse (not in traditional poetic form), relying heavily on the rhythms of common American speech.

Childhood and early career

Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, in West Hills, Long Island, the second of nine children. His family soon moved to Brooklyn, where he attended school for a few years. Young Whitman took to reading at an early age. By 1830 his formal education was over, and for the next five years he learned the printing trade. For about five years, beginning in 1836, he taught school on Long Island; during this time he also founded the weekly newspaper Long-Islander.

By 1841 Whitman was in New York City, where his interests turned to journalism. His short stories and poetry of this period were indistinguishable from the popular work of the day, as was his first novel, Franklin Evans, or the Inebriate (1842). For the next few years Whitman edited several newspapers and contributed to others. He was dismissed from the Brooklyn Eagle because of political differences with the owner. In 1848 he traveled south and for three months worked for the New Orleans Crescent. The sheer physical beauty of the new nation made a vivid impression on him, and he was to draw on this experience in his later poetry.

First edition of Leaves of Grass

Not much is known of Whitman's literary activities that can account for his sudden transformation (change) from journalist and hack writer into revolutionary poet. The first edition of Leaves of Grass (1855) opened with a rather casual portrait of Whitman, the self-professed "poet of the people," dressed in workman's clothes. In a lengthy preface Whitman announced that his poetry would celebrate the greatness of the new nation—"The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem"—and of its peoples—"The largeness of nature or the nation were monstrous without a corresponding largeness and generosity of the spirit of the citizen." Of the twelve poems (the titles were added later), "Song of Myself," "The Sleepers," "There Was a Child Went Forth," and "I Sing the Body Electric" are the best known today. In these Whitman turned his back on the literary models of the past. He stressed the rhythms of common American speech, delighting in informal and slang expressions.

The first edition of Leaves sold poorly. Fortunately, Whitman had sent Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1892) a free copy, and in his now famous reply, Emerson wrote: "I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed.… I greet you at the beginning of a great career." Emerson's enthusiasm for Leaves of Grass was understandable, for he had strongly influenced the younger poet. Whitman echoed much of Emerson's philosophy in his preface and poems. Emerson's letter had a profound impact on Whitman, completely overshadowing the otherwise poor reception the volume received.

Second edition of Leaves of Grass

For the second edition of Leaves of Grass (1856), Whitman added twenty new poems to his original twelve. With this edition, he began his lifelong practice of adding new poems to Leaves of Grass and revising those previously published in order to bring them into line with his present moods and feelings. Also, over the years he was to drop a number of poems from Leaves.

Among the new poems in the 1856 edition were "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" (one of Whitman's masterpieces), "Salut au Monde!," "A Woman Waits for Me," and "Spontaneous Me." Most of the 1855 preface he reworked to form the nationalistic poem "By Blue Ontario's Shore." Like the first edition, the second sold poorly.

The third edition of Leaves (1860) was brought out by a Boston publisher, one of the few times in his career that Whitman did not have to publish Leaves of Grass at his own expense. This edition, referred to by Whitman as his "new Bible," contained the earlier poems plus one hundred forty-six new ones. For the first time Whitman arranged many of the poems in special groupings, a practice he continued in all later editions. The most notable of these "groups" were "Children of Adam," a gathering of love poems, and "Calamus," a group of poems celebrating the brotherhood and comradeship of men, or, in Whitman's phrase, "manly love."

Whitman and the Civil War

Soon after the outbreak of the Civil War (1861–65; a war between regions of the United States in which Northern forces clashed with those of the South), Whitman went to Virginia to search for his brother George, reported wounded in action. Here Whitman experienced the war firsthand. He remained in Washington, D.C., working part-time in the Paymaster's Office. He devoted many long hours serving as a volunteer aide in the hospitals in Washington, ministering to the needs of the sick and wounded soldiers. His daily contact with sickness and death took its toll. Whitman himself became ill with "hospital malaria." Within a few months he recovered. In January 1865 he took a clerk's position in the Indian Bureau of the Department of the Interior.

The impact of the war on Whitman was reflected in his separately published Drum-Taps (1865). In such poems as "Cavalry Crossing a Ford," "The Wound-Dresser," "Come Up from the Fields Father," "Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night," "Sight in Camp in the Daybreak Gray and Dim," and "Year That Trembled and Reel'd Beneath Me," Whitman caught with beautiful simplicity of statement the horror, loneliness, and anguish caused by the war.

Later career

Following the Civil War and the publication of the fourth edition, Whitman's poetry became increasingly preoccupied with themes relating to the soul, death, and immortality (living forever). He was entering the final phase of his career. Within the span of some dozen years, the poet of the body had given way to the poet of internationalism (not concentrating on a single country) and the cosmic (relating to the universe). Such poems as "Whispers of Heavenly Death," "Darest Thou Now O Soul," "The Last Invocation," and "A Noiseless Patient Spider," with their emphasis on the spiritual, paved the way for "Passage to India" (1871), Whitman's most important (and ambitious) poem of the post–Civil War period.

In 1881 Whitman settled on the final arrangement of the poems in Leaves of Grass, and thereafter no revisions were made. (All new poems written after 1881 were added as annexes [additions] to Leaves. ) The seventh edition was published by James Osgood. The Boston district attorney threatened prosecution against Osgood unless certain poems were removed. When Whitman refused, Osgood dropped publication of the book. However, a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, publisher reissued the book in 1882.

In his last years Whitman received the respect due a great literary figure and personality. He died on March 26, 1892, in Camden, New Jersey. Leaves of Grass has been widely translated, and Whitman's reputation is now worldwide.

For More Information

Allen, Gay Wilson. The Solitary Singer: A Critical Biography of Walt Whitman. New York: Macmillan, 1955. Reprint, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.

Loving, Jerome. Walt Whitman: The Song of Himself. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.

Reef, Catherine. Walt Whitman. New York: Clarion Books, 1995.

Reynolds, David S. Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography. New York: Knopf, 1995.

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Walt Whitman

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Walt Whitman Biographgy

Walt Whitman , the son of Walter and Louisa Whitman, was born on the 31st of May 1819. During his childhood years, the Whitmans settled in Brooklyn before moving to Long Island, ten years after. All nine children, along with their parents, settled in Long Island beginning the 1830s.

Whitman became interested in the written word, which inspired him to become more exposed to the printing industry. He was only 12 at that time, and he was quite an eager reader. In fact, he was only self-taught, yet the young Whitman was already well-versed with several literary pieces including the Bible and works of several writers such as Homer, Shakespeare and Dante.

While in New York City, Whitman found a job as a printer, but he was forced to leave because of a huge fire that crippled the printing industry in the area. At 17, he decided to work as a teacher in Long Island. He was employed in a school house with just a single room, and he remained in this career until the year 1841. After his professional experience as a teacher, his interest shifted to journalism.

Working as a full-time journalist, Whitman founded the "Long Islander", which was a weekly newspaper in the district. Eventually, he started editing several newspapers both in New York and in Brooklyn. By 1848, he moved on to another job as an editor, but this time, he was working on the New Orleans Crescent. It was also during his stay in New Orleans where he realized the painful reality of slavery in the city.

After spending a few years working as an editor, Whitman expanded his horizons and founded the "Brooklyn Freeman". This was a newspaper that he spearheaded during the fall of 1848 when Whitman returned to the place where he spent most of his childhood - in Brooklyn. It was also here where he persevered to improve his extraordinary poetic styles that impressed numerous personalities including Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Becoming more fascinated with poetry, Whitman opted to publish a volume of his book called Leaves of Grass , in 1855. This featured a preface and 12 of his original and untitled poems. After publishing, he gave Emerson a copy before releasing a follow-up edition to his book. This was in 1856, and the book contained 33 poems including a letter he received from Emerson and a response by Whitman. The book was edited several times afterwards, and the revised editions were published throughout the lifetime of this great American poet.

During the Civil War, he became more interested in freelance journalism. In addition to this new preoccupation, he spent so much time traveling and visiting wounded soldiers in New York City hospitals. In 1862, he also went to Washington D.C, so he could take care of his brother who was badly wounded and suffering because of the war. In fact, this inspired him to remain in the city and help out in the hospitals.

Aside from his experience in this field, Whitman worked as a clerk for the city's Department of Interior. However, he was forced to leave when James Harlan, the Secretary of the Interior, fired him. Whitman's writings in the Leaves of Grass was rather "offensive", according to Harlan.

This event took things to the worse as it caused Whitman to rely on too little salary from his job as a clerk, as well as some royalties he received from his books. Despite these financial issues, he still found a way to obtain supplies that patients needed to make it in their day-to-day life. Moreover, Whitman sent money to his mother, who was already widowed at that time. He also supported the needs of his brother who was also struggling financially. Nevertheless, Whitman remained optimistic, and he was able to get by with the occasional monetary support he received from writers in England and the United States.

By the 1870s, he remained in New Jersey to visit his mother who was then in her deathbed. He also suffered a stroke, which stopped him from returning to Washington. Hence, he decided to stay with his brother until the time that he saved enough money from the 1882 publication of his book Leaves of Grass . This gave him a chance to buy his own home in Camden, New Jersey. It was in this place where Whitman spent his last years while revising and adding more content to his book. He also completed Good-Bye, My Fancy, which was his last volume of prose and poems.

Whitman died on March 26, 1892, and his tomb was personally designed by the poet. He was buried in Harleigh Cemetery.

Even years after Whitman's death, he maintained his reputation as one of the finest poets in America. In fact, his works continued to live on, and these served as his legacy to the world of poetry and prose.

Poet Biographies

Walt Whitman: Voice of American Poetry

Walt Whitman was an American poet, essayist, and journalist known for his unconventional style of writing. His works have been celebrated for their boldness, honesty, and emotional depth, making him one of the most influential poets in American literature.

Walt Whitman, born in 1819, is known as the father of free  verse  poetry. His deeply emotional, spiritual, and nature-based poems appeal to poetry loves around the world. Throughout his work, he explores themes of life, the self, sexuality, nature, and spirituality.

He is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential poets to come out of America in the 19th century. He is seen on the same level as the likes of Emily Dickinson . One of the features of Walt Whitman’s legacy is the impact he had on later poets. He was seen as the successor to some of the all-time great poets, such as William Shakespeare , Homer, Virgil, and Dante.

About Walt Whitman

• 1 Life Facts
• 2 Interesting Facts
• 3 Famous Poems
• 4 Early Life
• 5 Literary Career
• 6 Writing Career and Relationships
• 7 Later Life
• 8 Influence from other Poets
• He was born in Long Island, New York, and was one of nine children.
• Whitman’s best-known work is the collection of personal poems, ‘ Leaves of Grass . ‘
• He was part of the American Renaissance movement.
• Whitman worked as a missionary in a hospital during the Civil War.
• Whitman died on March 26, 1892.

Interesting Facts

• Before his death, Whitman designed his granite mausoleum (it’s shaped like a house).
• ‘ Leaves of Grass,’  published in 1855, was only 12 poems long.
• Whitman got his first job at 11 years old.
• He and Oscar Wilde briefly met and might have kissed.
• Bram Stoker (the author of  Dracula ) was a huge fan of Whitman’s writing.

Famous Poems

• ‘ O Captain! My Captain!   is an elegy devoted to a deceased “Captain.” This unnamed man was a great leader and someone the speaker knows the world will miss. At the beginning of the poem, the captain-less ship sails home to port and is greeted by a celebrating crowd. The speaker expresses his desire that the captain was there to see and feel the excitement of the people onshore. It is a well-known fact that this poem was written soon after Abraham Lincoln’s death, making Lincoln the beloved and deceased captain.
• ‘Song of Myself’  is one of the most popular poems in Whitman’s volume ‘ Leaves of Grass;’ it is also the longest. It is an incredibly complicated poem and impossible to sum up in just a few lines. At its simplest, though, the poem is a celebration of life. It is a “song” about the speaker’s transcendent self. It is about becoming one with nature, understanding and accepting the truths of oneself, and meditating on what those truths mean.
• ‘ Me Imperturbe ‘ is about a speaker’s dedication to maintaining his current mental and emotional state of being in the face of the challenges the world throws at him. As is common within his poetry, it is through nature that Whitman’s speaker finds himself. The natural world allows him to shake off some of the clutter of his everyday life and free his mind. The experience also opens his mind enough so that he realizes that nothing he does, in the way of jobs or careers, would put his true self at risk.
• ‘ Pioneers! O Pioneers!’ This piece was published in ‘ Leaves of Grass’ in 1865 and is considered to be a tribute to the pioneers of the American West. The poet spends a great deal of time in the poem speaking about how courageous these men and women were and the perseverance it took to survive. An interesting element of this piece is the fact that Whitman chose to refer to the pioneers as “we.” He includes himself, and the reader, in the text. This creates a sense of unity that runs throughout the poem and connects everyone together as pioneers in one way or another.
• ‘ I Sing the Body Electric ‘  compares the body and the soul. Whitman comes to the conclusion that they are much more similar than they are different. He moves through different images of various kinds of bodies. There is a dense and thrilling list of images in the second part of the poem that outlines why the body is a beautiful thing. He speaks on both male and female bodies as well. The poem gets more specific towards the end when Whitman talks about one man, a farmer, who has five sons. He also places himself in the body of a slave auctioneer, whose job it is to sell black bodies. All parts of these bodies he speaks on are parts of the soul.

Explore more Walt Whitman poems .

Whitman was born in 1819 and lived with his parents and eight other siblings in West Hills, Long Island, New York City. The Whitman Family moved to Brooklyn in 1823. By the time Whitman was twelve, he had started to become interested in the written word as he learned the printer’s trade. He would work in this trade until he became a teacher at the age of seventeen in 1836. His teaching career would continue until 1841 when he turned to journalism.

Literary Career

In 1855 Walt Whitman published the first edition of ‘ Leaves of Grass’  with his own money. This initial iteration contained 12 untitled poems. This was far from the last version of the volume. It expanded from 12 poems out into the long and winding volume that we know today. This volume was the first major literary accomplishment of Whitman’s career. The collection was a turning point in American literature, as its free verse , unconventional themes, and celebration of the human experience were unlike anything that had been seen before. It is said that Whitman disregarded some of the poetic rules and patterns of his contemporaries.

He spent the previous years working as a journalist, writing columns, and a serialized  novel  lengthily titled  Life and Adventures of Jack Engle: An Auto-Biography: A Story of New York at the Present Time in which the Reader Will Find Some Familiar Characters in six installments of New York’s The Sunday Dispatch.

I exist as I am, that is enough. Walt Whitman

Famously, ‘ Leaves of Grass’  was met with suspicion and scandal. Sexuality played a major part in the volume (increasingly so as it grew). His publisher contemplated not releasing the second edition but ended up doing so. It contained 20 new poems and was continually revised and rereleased throughout Whitman’s lifetime. Whitman was inspired to write the poem by his travels through the American frontier and his respect for Ralph Waldo Emerson .

After spending time working in hospitals as a clerk in Washington, D.C, during the Civil War, Whitman wrote: ‘ The Great Army of the Sick ,’ which was published in 1863, detailing his experiences. Whitman was a man of good morals , as he would volunteer in his spare time, dressing the wounds of injured soldiers.

In 1865, Whitman published a completely new collection of poems named ‘ Drum-Taps .’ 

The final version of ‘ Leaves of Grass’  is known as the “Deathbed Edition.” It was published before his death in 1892 of bronchial pneumonia.

Writing Career and Relationships

Today, Whitman’s work is considered groundbreaking. It moves beyond the normal categories, utilizes strange, surprising, and unusual images, and touches on topics and themes that other writers were too conservative or afraid to go near. Whitman bravely explored sexuality, prostitution, death, and decay.

Today, although he was not the inventor of the form, he is known as the father of free verse poetry. This is a  style of writing  that does not employ a single  rhyme scheme  or metrical pattern.

Whitman believed that it was important for the poet and their  audience  to have a relationship with one another. A writer cannot operate in a vacuum. This is seen most prominently in  ‘Song of Myself,’  the most popular poem in ‘ Leaves of Grass.’  Many writers and historians consider Whitman an integral part of American history.

Unfortunately, Walt Whitman’s later life was marked by declining health, and he suffered a stroke in 1873 that left him partially paralyzed. It is said that Whitman’s health improved slowly over the years after his stroke. He continued to write poetry that addressed themes surrounding mortality and reflection on life. His ill health clearly had an impact on his mentality toward his work.

He moved to a cottage in Camden, New York, where he ultimately spent the rest of his life. He died at the age of 72 in 1892 and was buried in a tomb he had designed himself in Harleigh Cemetery in Camden, New Jersey.

Influence from other Poets

Walt Whitman was notably influenced by the poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson , Sir Walter Scott ,  William Shakespeare , Frances Wright, and Homer. It should also be mentioned that Whitman took inspiration from figures such as Thomas Paine.

His influence has been felt by many more writers. His pioneering  style  of poetry touched  Ezra Pound ,  Allen Ginsberg ,  William Carlos Williams , and many more.

Walt Whitman is one of the most well-known poets of 19th century America. Many consider Whitman, the author of ‘ Leaves of Grass,’  alongside Emily Dickinson as the most influential poet of the time period. Whitman was known for his unconventional poetry that always contained a sense of optimism.

Walt Whitman’s poetry style is known for its uniquity. Typically consisting of free verse and unconventional themes. His works often were made up of long, flowing lines and repetition , using simple, direct, grand, and sweeping language. Whitman’s poetry reflected his own experiences, often writing about his own life and the lives of those around him.

It is said that Walt Whitman believed in Pantheism, the notion that everything has a piece of God in it. He also believed in equality, individualism, spirituality, democracy, and optimism. Many of these beliefs seeped into his works.

Walt Whitman was a poet that generated a vast number of famous quotes. However, as it reflects Whitman’s optimistic outlook, one that stands out is ‘Keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you.’

Like many poets of the 19th century, Romantic themes seeped into their works. For Whitman, his works on nature, beauty, emotion, and the humane experience contained many hallmarks of Romanticism .

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• Whitman's Life

31 May, Walter Whitman born at West Hills, Huntington Township, New York, the second child of Walter Whitman, house builder, and Louisa Van Velsor, both descendants of early settlers on Long Island. Seven other Whitman children survive infancy: Jesse (1818–1870), Mary Elizabeth (1821–1899), Hannah Louisa (1823–1908); Andrew Jackson (1827–1863); George Washington (1829–1901); Thomas Jefferson (1833–1890); and Edward (1835—1892).

27 May, Whitman family moves to Brooklyn expecting housing boom.

4 July, Marquis de Lafayette visits Brooklyn and, according to Whitman's collection, embraces him.

Attends public school in Brooklyn. Family frequently relocates within city.

Quits school; works as an office boy for lawyer, doctor.

Learns printing trade as apprentice for Long Island Patriot .

Summer 1832, works at Worthington's printing house. Fall 1832 to May 1835, works as compositor on Long Island Star . 1833, Whitman family moves back to Long Island.

Works as a printer in New York but is unemployed after a great fire in printing istrict, 12 August 1835.

Teaches school on Long Island at East Norwich, Hempstead, Babylon, Long Swamp, and Smithtown.

Edits weekly newspaper, Long Islander , Huntington; works on Long Island Democrat , Jamaica.

Fall 1840, campaigns for Martin Van Buren; teaches school on Long Island at Trimming Square, Woodbury, Dix Hills, and Whitestone.

May, moves to New York City; works as a compositor for The New World . July, addresses Democratic Party rally in City Hall Park. August, publishes "Death in the School-Room (a Fact)" in Democratic Review .

November, Franklin Evans; or The Inebriate published as an extra to The New World .

Works briefly for the Aurora , Evening Tattler , Statesman , Democrat and Mirror and contributes to other papers in New York City.

August 1845, returns to Brooklyn; works for Brooklyn Evening Star until March 1846.

March 1846 to January 1848, edits Brooklyn Daily Eagle . Attends opera regularly.

January, quits (or is fired) from Daily Eagle . February, goes to New Orleans with brother Jeff to edit Daily Crescent . May, resigns position and returns to Brooklyn via Mississippi and Great Lakes.

9 September 1848, first issue of Brooklyn Weekly reeman , a "free-soil" newspaper founded and edited by Whitman; office burns after first issue. Spring Freeman becomes a daily; Whitman edits until 1 September 1849. July, examined by phrenologist Lorenzo Fowler.

Operates job-printing office, bookstore, and house building business; does freelance journalism. 31 March 1851, addresses Brooklyn Art Union; writes "Pictures" in 1853.

15 May, takes out copyright on the first edition of Leaves of Grass , containing twelve poems and a preface. Leaves is printed by the Rome brothers in Brooklyn during first week of July. Father dies on 11 July. Ralph Waldo Emerson writes to poet on 21 July: "I greet you at the beginning of a great career."

November 1855 to August 1856 writes for Life llustrated ; writes a political tract, "The Eighteenth Presidency!" Between August and September 1856, phrenologists Fowler and Wells publish second edition of Leaves of Grass , containing thirty-two poems, Emerson's letter, and an open letter by Whitman in reply to Emerson. November, visited by Henry David Thoreau and Bronson Alcott in Brooklyn.

Spring 1857 to Summer 1859, edits Brooklyn Daily Times ; unemployed during the winter of 1859–1860; frequents Pfaff's restaurant, a center of New York's literary bohemia.

March, goes to Boston to oversee third edition of Leaves of Grass , published by Thayer and Eldridge. Urged by Emerson to "expurgate" the "Children of Adam" poems.

12 April 1861, the Civil War begins; Whitman's brother George enlists. Writes freelance journalism; visits the sick and injured at New York Hospital. December 1862, goes to Virginia where he learns that George has been wounded at Fredricksburg; remains in camp two weeks.

Moves to Washington, D.C.; visits military hospitals and supports himself as part-time clerk in Army Paymaster's Office. Becomes friends with William D. O'Connor and John burroughs. December 1863, brother Andrew dies of tuberculosis aggravated by alcoholism. June 1864, returns to Brooklyn for six months on sick leave. 5 December 1864, has brother Jesse ommitted to King's County Lunatic Asylum.

Returns to Washington after 24 January appointment to clerkship in Indian Bureau of Department of the Interior. 4 March, attends Lincoln's second inauguration. 14 April, Lincoln assassinated. May, begins printing Drum-Taps (New York), but suspends printing to add a sequel commemorating Lincoln. 30 June, discharged from position by Secretary James Harlan, supposedly because of authorship of obscene poetry. Is transferred to a clerkship in Attorney General's Office. Summer, writes "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" and "O Captain! My Captain!" October, publishes Drum-Taps and Sequel (Washington). Begins relationship with Peter Doyle, an eighteen-year old Confederate horse-car conductor, in Washington.

O'Connor publishes The Good Gray Poet (New ork: Bunce and Huntington), a defense co-written by Whitman, in response to the poet's firing by Harlan.

John Burroughs supports Whitman in Notes on Walt Whitman as Poet and Person (New York: American News Company). 6 July, William Michael Rossetti publishes an appreciation of "Walt Whitman's Poems" in the London Chronicle . Fourth edition of Leaves of Grass printed in New York; publishes "Democracy," first part of Democratic Vistas , in December in the Galaxy .

Poems of Walt Whitman , selected and edited by Rossetti, published in London (John Camden Hotten, publisher). "Personalism," second part of Democratic Vistas , published in the May Galaxy .

Develops substantial following in England; Anne Gilchrist and, about this time, Edward Carpenter read Rossetti edition and are attracted to Whitman.

Suffers depression; prints fifth edition of Leaves of Grass , and Democratic Vistas and Passage to India , all in Washington D.C., and dated 1871. May, Anne Gilchrist publishes "An Englishwoman's Estimate of Walt Whitman" in The Radical , Boston.

Algernon Charles Swinburne greets Whitman in Songs Before Sunrise ; Alfred, Lord Tennyson and John Addington Symonds send affectionate letters. Anne Gilchrist writes a marriage proposal; Whitman politely declines (3 November). Rudolph Schmidt translates Democratic Vistas into Danish. 7 September, Whitman reads After All, Not to Create Only at American Institute Exhibition in New York City (published in Boston by Roberts Brothers).

1 June, Thérèse Bentzon (Mme. Blanc) publishes critical article on Whitman in Revue des Deux Mondes . 26 June, reads "As A Strong Bird on inions Free" at Dartmouth College commencement (published in Washington, D.C.). Succumbs to heat prostration; quarrels with O'Connor; writes will.

23 January, suffers paralytic stroke. Mother dies on 23 May. "Song of the Universal" read at Tufts College commencement by proxy. June, Whitman leaves Washington and moves in with his brother George in Camden, New Jersey.

12 July, receives adulatory letter from Carpenter. Midsummer, discharged from his position in Washington. Publishes "Song of the Redwood-Tree" and "Prayer of Columbus" in Harper's Magazine .

Publishes "Author's" or "Centennial" edition of Leaves of Grass and Two Rivulets , a matched set of volumes, and Memoranda During the War (all in Camden, New Jersey); and "Walt Whitman's Actual American Position" in West Jersey Press (26 January), an unsigned article that leads to an international controversy about America's neglect of Whitman. Befriends Harry Stafford, a printers' employee; frequently visits the Stafford family farm at Timber Creek. September, Anne Gilchrist visits the United States with her children, rents a house, and hopes to marry Whitman.

28 January, lectures on Thomas Paine in Philadelphia. Painted by George W. Waters in New York. May, Edward Carpenter visits Whitman in Camden; Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke visits Whitman and becomes a close friend. Whitman visits Burroughs in Esopus, New York, with Harry Stafford.

Too sick to give planned lecture on "The Death of Abraham Lincoln" in spring. June, visits J.H. Johnston and John Burroughs in New York.

14 April, gives first Lincoln lecture in New York. Anne Gilchrist returns to England. September, travels west as far as Colorado; falls ill, and stays with brother Jeff in St. Louis.

April, gives Lincoln lecture in Philadelphia. January, returns to Camden. June to October, travels in Canada and visits Bucke in London, Ontario.

15 April, gives Lincoln lecture in Boston. August to October, visits Boston to supervise a new edition of Leaves of Grass published by James R. Osgood containing the final arrangement of 293 poems. Visits Emerson in Concord.

January, Oscar Wilde visits Whitman in Camden. April, Osgood withdraws edition of Leaves of Grass on complaint of Boston District Attorney. Rees Welsh (later David McKay) reprints Osgood edition in Philadelphia and issues Specimen Days and Collect . Publicity of Boston "suppression" of Whitman causes unprecedented boom in sales of Leaves of Grass . Becomes friends with Pearsall Smith, wealthy Philadelphia glass merchant and prominent Quaker.

McKay publishes Bucke's Walt Whitman a biography written with contributions from Whitman.

March, buys house at 328 Mickle Street, Camden, New Jersey, with royalties from McKay edition of Leaves of Grass . June, Carpenter visits a second time. Becomes friends with Horace Traubel, Thomas Harned, Talcott Williams, Thomas Donaldson, and Robert Ingersoll.

July, has heat stroke. Friends, headed by Donaldson, present him with horse and buggy.

Gives Lincoln lecture in Elkton, Maryland; Camden; Philadelphia; and Haddonfield, New Jersey. Pall Mall Gazette promotes fund which presents Whitman with eighty pounds. Boston supporters send $800 for purchase of summer cottage on Timber Creek (never built).

14 April, Lincoln lecture in New York City at Madison Square Theater attracts any notables and nets $600, followed by reception at Westminster Hotel. Sculptured by Sidney Morse; painted by Herbert Gilchrist, J.W. Alexander, and Thomas Eakins.

June, suffers another paralytic stroke followed by severe illness. Makes a new will naming Richard Maurice Bucke, Thomas B. Harned, and Horace Traubel as literary executors. Publishes November Boughs (Philadelphia: David McKay).

Seventieth birthday party commemorated in Camden's Compliment to Walt Whitman (ed. Horace Traubel. Philadelphia: David McKay).

April, delivers Lincoln lecture for the last time, Philadelphia. 19 August, writes to John Addington Symonds; declares Symond's homosexual interpretation of "Calamus" poems "damnable" and claims to have fathered six illegitimate children. October, Whitman contracts to have $4,000 tomb built for himself in Harleigh Cemetery, Camden, New Jersey.

Publishes Good-bye My Fancy and Deathbed edition of Leaves of Grass (both published by McKay, dated 892). Prepares Complete Prose Works (McKay, 1892). Last birthday dinner at Mickle Street. December, catches pneumonia.

26 March, dies at Mickle Street; 30 March, buried in Harleigh Cemetery, Camden, New Jersey.

William A. Pannapacker

Reproduced from J. R. LeMaster and Donald D. Kummings, eds., Walt Whitman: An Encyclopedia (New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1998), by permission.

The Walt Whitman Archive, edited by Matt Cohen, Ed Folsom, & Kenneth M. Price, is published by the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Nebraska–⁠Lincoln under a Creative Commons License .

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Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman . Prints and Photographs Division , Library of Congress. Digital ID # ppmsca 08541

On December 16, 1862, poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892) saw the name of his brother George, a member of the New York 51st Volunteers, listed among the wounded at Fredericksburg, Virginia, in the New York Herald . Whitman rushed from his home in Brooklyn, New York, to the Washington, D.C., area to search the hospitals and encampments. This was Whitman’s indoctrination to the ghastly consequences of warfare. The poet was forty-three years old when he began volunteering in Washington's war hospitals in early 1863. He became an unpaid “delegate” of the Christian Commission and was authorized to visit the sick and wounded in hospitals and camps to comfort and provide for their needs. Profoundly affected by his war work, Whitman published Drum-Taps (1865), one of the most important books of poetry to emerge from the war period, which included calls to arms and accounts of the personal heroism and comradeship of battlefields and encampments. The trauma of the Civil War would shape subsequent editions of Whitman's masterwork of poetry, Leaves of Grass (1855–1892), as well as his prose writings.

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