Walt Whitm

an

(1819-1892)

Life

• Born near Huntington, New York

• Brooklyn, New York -- attended public school

• New York City -- worked in printing shops

• Long Island in 1835 -- taught in country

schools

• New York City -- worked as a printer and

journalist; enjoyed the theater, the opera,

and the libraries

• edited the influential Brooklyn Eagle

• a brief sojourn in New Orleans, Louisiana

• various jobs like building houses

Whitman at 29

This
daguerreotype
was made in
New Orleans,
during
Whitman's
residence there
between
February and
May 1848

Whitman’s poetry

• 1855 Whitman issu

ed the first edition
of Leaves of Grass

• “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”
• “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking”
• Drum-Taps (1865) -- the hope for

reconciliation between North and
South

• “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard

Bloom’”

• “O Captain! My Captain!”
• “Passage to India” (1871)
• 1965 the definitive “Reader’s Edition”

of Leaves of Grass is published,
edited by Harold W. Blodgett and
Sculley Bradley.

• During the Civil Wa

r Whitman
ministered to
wounded soldiers
in Union army
hospitals in
Washington, D.C.

• 1873 suffered a

stroke that left him
partially paralyzed

• Settled

in
Camden,
New
Jersey

picture taken in Whitman's first floor sitting room in his
Camden home

Prose

Democratic Vistas, published in 1871
-- a classic discussion of the theory of
democracy and its possibilities

Whitman
in 1881

Impact

•Whitman’s poetry has been

translated into every major language

•A formative influence on the work of

such American writers as

Hart Crane
William Carlos Williams
Wallace Stevens
Allen Ginsberg