Walt�Whitman

(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�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)

• 1965 the definitive “Reader's Edition” of Leaves of Grass is published, 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

• Settled in Camden, New Jersey
  

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

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