Whitman, Walt (1819-1892)

Born near Huntington, New York,

Brooklyn, New York, he 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

Whitman edited the influential Brooklyn Eagle

a brief sojourn in New Orleans, Louisiana

various jobs like building houses

1855 Whitman issued 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)

the definitive “Reader's Edition” of Leaves of Grass (1965),

edited by Harold W. Blodgett and Sculley Bradley.

During the Civil War Whitman ministered to wounded soldiers in Union army hospitals in Washington, D.C.

1873 suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed

Camden, New Jersey,

Democratic Vistas (1871)

a classic discussion of the theory of democracy and its possibilities

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

---