Walt Whitman Popular Books

Walt Whitman Biography & Facts

Walter Whitman Jr. (; May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist, and journalist. He is considered one of the most influential poets in American literature. Whitman incorporated both transcendentalism and realism in his writings and is often called the father of free verse. His work was controversial in his time, particularly his 1855 poetry collection Leaves of Grass, which was described by some as obscene for its overt sensuality. Whitman was born in Huntington on Long Island, and lived in Brooklyn as a child and through much of his career. At the age of 11, he left formal schooling to go to work. He worked as a journalist, a teacher, and a government clerk. Whitman's major poetry collection, Leaves of Grass, first published in 1855, was financed with his own money and became well known. The work was an attempt to reach out to the common person with an American epic. Whitman continued expanding and revising Leaves of Grass until his death in 1892. During the American Civil War, he went to Washington, D.C., and worked in hospitals caring for the wounded. His poetry often focused on both loss and healing. On the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, whom Whitman greatly admired, he authored two poems, "O Captain! My Captain!" and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd", and gave a series of lectures on Lincoln. After suffering a stroke towards the end of his life, Whitman moved to Camden, New Jersey, where his health further declined. When he died at the age of 72, his funeral was a public event.Whitman's influence on poetry remains strong. Art historian Mary Berenson wrote, "You cannot really understand America without Walt Whitman, without Leaves of Grass... He has expressed that civilization, 'up to date,' as he would say, and no student of the philosophy of history can do without him." Modernist poet Ezra Pound called Whitman "America's poet... He is America." Life and work Early life Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, in West Hills, New York, the second of nine children of Quaker parents Walter and Louisa Van Velsor Whitman, of English and Dutch descent respectively. He was immediately nicknamed "Walt" to distinguish him from his father. At the age of four, Whitman moved with his family from Huntington to Brooklyn, living in a series of homes, in part due to bad investments. Whitman looked back on his childhood as generally restless and unhappy, given his family's difficult economic struggles. One happy moment that he later recalled was when he was lifted in the air and kissed on the cheek by the Marquis de Lafayette during a celebration of the setting of the Brooklyn Apprentices' Library's cornerstone by Lafayette in Brooklyn on July 4, 1825. Whitman later worked as a librarian at that institution.At the age of 11, Whitman ended his formal schooling and sought employment to assist his family, which was struggling economically. He was an office boy for two lawyers and later was an apprentice and printer's devil for the weekly Long Island newspaper the Patriot, edited by Samuel E. Clements. There, Whitman learned about the printing press and typesetting. He may have written "sentimental bits" of filler material for occasional issues. Clements aroused controversy when he and two friends attempted to dig up the corpse of the Quaker minister Elias Hicks to create a plaster mold of his head. Clements left the Patriot shortly afterward, possibly as a result of the controversy. Early career The following summer Whitman worked for another printer, Erastus Worthington, in Brooklyn. His family moved back to West Hills, New York on Long Island in the spring, but Whitman remained and took a job at the shop of Alden Spooner, editor of the leading Whig weekly newspaper the Long-Island Star. While at the Star, Whitman became a regular patron of the local library, joined a town debating society, began attending theater performances, and anonymously published some of his earliest poetry in the New-York Mirror. At the age of 16 in May 1835, Whitman left the Star and Brooklyn. He moved to New York City to work as a compositor though, in later years, Whitman could not remember where. He attempted to find further work but had difficulty, in part due to a severe fire in the printing and publishing district, and in part due to a general collapse in the economy leading up to the Panic of 1837. In May 1836, he rejoined his family, now living in Hempstead, Long Island. Whitman taught intermittently at various schools until the spring of 1838, though he was not satisfied as a teacher.After his teaching attempts, Whitman returned to Huntington, New York, to found his own newspaper, the Long-Islander. Whitman served as publisher, editor, pressman, and distributor and even provided home delivery. After ten months, he sold the publication to E. O. Crowell, whose first issue appeared on July 12, 1839. There are no known surviving copies of the Long-Islander published under Whitman. By the summer of 1839, he found a job as a typesetter in Jamaica, Queens, with the Long Island Democrat, edited by James J. Brenton. He left shortly thereafter, and made another attempt at teaching from the winter of 1840 to the spring of 1841. One story, possibly apocryphal, tells of Whitman's being chased away from a teaching job in Southold, New York, in 1840. After a local preacher called him a "Sodomite", Whitman was allegedly tarred and feathered. Biographer Justin Kaplan notes that the story is likely untrue, because Whitman regularly vacationed in the town thereafter. Biographer Jerome Loving calls the incident a "myth". During this time, Whitman published a series of ten editorials, called "Sun-Down Papers—From the Desk of a Schoolmaster", in three newspapers between the winter of 1840 and July 1841. In these essays, he adopted a constructed persona, a technique he would employ throughout his career.Whitman moved to New York City in May, initially working a low-level job at the New World, working under Park Benjamin Sr. and Rufus Wilmot Griswold. He continued working for short periods of time for various newspapers; in 1842 he was editor of the Aurora and from 1846 to 1848 he was editor of the Brooklyn Eagle. While working for the latter institution, many of his publications were in the area of music criticism, and it is during this time that he became a devoted lover of Italian opera through reviewing performances of works by Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi. This new interest had an impact on his writing in free verse. He later said, "But for the opera, I could never have written Leaves of Grass."Throughout the 1840s, Whitman contributed freelance fiction and poetry to various periodicals, including Brother Jonathan magazine edited by John Neal. Whitman lost his position at the Brooklyn Eagle in 1848 after siding with the free-soil "Barnburner" wing of the Democratic party against the newspaper's owner, Isaac Van Anden, who belonged to the conservative, or "Hunker", wing of the party. Wh.... Discover the Walt Whitman popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Walt Whitman books.

Best Seller Walt Whitman Books of 2024

  • Reading with Patrick synopsis, comments

    Reading with Patrick

    Michelle Kuo

    “In all of the literature addressing education, race, poverty, and criminal justice, there has been nothing quite like Reading with Patrick.”The AtlanticA memoir of the lifech...

  • Walt Whitman synopsis, comments

    Walt Whitman

    Ted Genoways

    In 1961 the first volume of Edwin Haviland Miller’s The Correspondence was published in the newly established series the Collected Writings of Walt Whitman. Miller proceeded to pub...

  • Walt Whitman in Mickle Street synopsis, comments

    Walt Whitman in Mickle Street

    Elizabeth Leavitt Keller

    Published in 1921, this volume recounts the last years of poet Walt Whitman in his Mickle Street house, with particular attention to his relationship with his housekeeper, Mrs. Dav...

  • Walt Whitman synopsis, comments

    Walt Whitman

    Robert Louis Stevenson

    “Walt Whitman” is a short essay from the compilation “Familiar studies of men and books”, written by Robert Louis Stevenson and first published in New Quarterly Magazine in October...

  • Delphi Complete Works of Walt Whitman synopsis, comments

    Delphi Complete Works of Walt Whitman

    Walt Whitman

    This is the fifth volume of a new series of publications by Delphi Classics, the bestselling publisher of classical works. Many poetry collections are often poorly formatted and di...

  • The Complete Works of Walt Whitman synopsis, comments

    The Complete Works of Walt Whitman

    Walt Whitman

    This carefully crafted ebook: "The Complete Works of Walt Whitman" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. Table of Contents: Poetry...

  • Walt Whitman synopsis, comments

    Walt Whitman

    Bliss Perry

    Second only to the biography of the American poet by his close friend, Richard Maurice Bucke, Bliss Perry's biography of Walt Whitman is considered one of the leading volumes o...

  • Walt Whitman synopsis, comments

    Walt Whitman

    Walt Whitman & Gary Schmidgall

    A fully unexpurgated collection that restores the sexual vitality and subversive flair suppressed by Whitman himself in later editions of Leaves of Grass.A century after his death,...

  • The Portable Walt Whitman synopsis, comments

    The Portable Walt Whitman

    Walt Whitman & Michael Warner

    A comprehensive collection of Whitman's most beloved works of poetry, prose, and short storiesWhen Walt Whitman selfpublished Leaves of Grass in 1855 it was a slim volume of twelve...

  • Good Poems synopsis, comments

    Good Poems

    Various Authors & Garrison Keillor

    Every day people tune in to The Writer's Almanac on public radio and hear Garrison Keillor read them a poem. And here, for the first time, is an anthology of poems from the show, c...

  • Ashes of Soldiers synopsis, comments

    Ashes of Soldiers

    Walt Whitman

    “The War of Attempted Secession has, of course, been the distinguishing event of my time,” wrote Walt Whitman after the struggle was over. “I commenced at the close of 1862, and co...

  • Poemas Walt Whitman synopsis, comments

    Poemas Walt Whitman

    Walt Whitman & Armando Vasseur

    Es una colección de poemas de Walt Whitman y publicada por Armando Vasseur.

  • Walt Whitman synopsis, comments

    Walt Whitman

    John Addington Symonds

    Including a portrait and four illustrations, this 1893 volume provides an intricate analysis of the themes found throughout Whitman's verses and the poet's unique rhyming s...

  • Walt Whitman synopsis, comments

    Walt Whitman

    Richard Maurice Bucke

    This 1883 biography was written by one of Whitman's literary executors. Author Richard Maurice Bucke became a close friend of Whitman after the two met in Camden in 1877. Bucke...

  • Walt Whitman synopsis, comments

    Walt Whitman

    David S. Reynolds

    From the great events of the day to the patient workings of a spider, few poets responded to the life around them as powerfully as Walt Whitman. Now, in this brief but bountiful vo...

  • Walt Whitman synopsis, comments

    Walt Whitman

    Roland Douglas Sawyer

    While mostly a biography of Whitman's life and career, Walt Whitman: The ProphetPoet details the writer's religion, political views and love of nature and how these are ref...

  • Meditations of Walt Whitman synopsis, comments

    Meditations of Walt Whitman

    Chris Highland

    Carry Walt Whitman’s wisdom with you in this inspirational guide that features 60 selections from his most insightful poems.Walt Whitman, the great American poet of the 19th centur...

  • The Patriotic Poems of Walt Whitman synopsis, comments

    The Patriotic Poems of Walt Whitman

    Walt Whitman

    This little volume of poems, selected from the complete edition published by us, is issued with the approval of the Whitman Executors, T. B. Harned and Horace Traubel, holders of t...

  • Walt Whitman synopsis, comments

    Walt Whitman

    Milton Hindus

    This set comprises of 40 volumes covering nineteenth and twentieth century European and American authors. These volumes will be available as a complete set, mini boxed sets (by th...

  • WALT WHITMAN synopsis, comments

    WALT WHITMAN

    Axel von Cossart

    Zeichen des Whitman ganz eigenen Stils sind seine Worte des "wahren Gedichts", die nicht den gefeilten Ausdruck suchen, sondern Natürlichkeit anstelle von Künstlichkeit den...

  • Abe synopsis, comments

    Abe

    David S. Reynolds

    Now an Apple TV+ documentary, Lincoln's Dilemma, airing February 18, 2022.One of the Wall Street Journal's Ten Best Books of the Year | A Washington Post Notable Book | A Christian...

  • Walt Whitman synopsis, comments

    Walt Whitman

    Basil De Selincourt

    Walt Whitman: A Critical Study examines the form, style and rhyme of the poet's famous works.

  • Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today synopsis, comments

    Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today

    Henry Eduard Legler

    Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today is a Fiction Short Story Book. This book says On a day about midyear in 1855, the conventional literary world was startled into indecorous behavior...

  • Works of Walt Whitman synopsis, comments

    Works of Walt Whitman

    Walt Whitman

    This collection was designed for optimal navigation on iPad and other electronic devices. It is indexed alphabetically, chronologically and by category, making it easier to access...

  • 50 Greatest Poems of Walt Whitman synopsis, comments

    50 Greatest Poems of Walt Whitman

    Walt Whitman

    Walt Whitman was born on Long Island, New York in 1819.After a generally unhappy childhood he went to work in the printing trade and teaching with little success. After years of di...

  • Walt Whitman synopsis, comments

    Walt Whitman

    Walt Whitman

    From the highly controversial Leaves of Grass, with its overt sexual imagery and delight of sensual pleasures, to the iconic Captain, oh my captain immortalised in the film Dead Po...

  • Walt Whitman synopsis, comments

    Walt Whitman

    Ed Folsom

    In 1992, the year of the hundredth anniversary of Walt Whitman’s death, a major gathering of international scholars took place at the University of Iowa. Over 150 participants hear...

  • Poems by Walt Whitman synopsis, comments

    Poems by Walt Whitman

    Walt Whitman & William Michael Rossetti

    The poems in this collection by American poet Walt Whitman were selected and edited by British critic William Michael Rossetti. The book was first published in London in 1868 and i...

  • Complete Prose Works by Walt Whitman synopsis, comments

    Complete Prose Works by Walt Whitman

    Walt Whitman

    Table of Contents:Specimen Days A Happy Hour's Command Answer to an Insisting Friend GenealogyVan Velsor and Whitman The Old Whitman and Van Velsor Cemeteries The Maternal Homest...

  • The Letters of Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman synopsis, comments

    The Letters of Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman

    Walt Whitman

    Anne Gilchrist was a British woman of letters. Upon reading Walt Whitman’s poems for the first time, she immediately wrote to the author to let him know her delight in the poems an...

  • Lincoln and Whitman synopsis, comments

    Lincoln and Whitman

    Daniel Mark Epstein

    It was more than coincidenceindeed, it was all but fatethat the lives and thoughts of Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman should converge during the terrible years of the Civil War. K...

  • The Complete Walt Whitman synopsis, comments

    The Complete Walt Whitman

    Walt Whitman

    Walt Whitman is widely regarded as one of the greats of American literature, despite causing great controversy in his own era, due to the apparent 'obscenity' of his works – in par...

  • Walt Whitman synopsis, comments

    Walt Whitman

    Walt Whitman

    Walt Whitman: Poetry and Prose. Life and complete works. Walt Whitman is considered the great representative of free verse and American style. His poetry has been a source of inspi...

  • Walt Whitman synopsis, comments

    Walt Whitman

    George Rice Carpenter

    This 1909 biography includes chapters on Walt Whitman's childhood, time as a journalist, career as a poet, political views and old age.

  • Walt Whitman synopsis, comments

    Walt Whitman

    Robert Green Ingersoll

    Written by Robert G. Ingersoll, "The Great Agnostic," this address pays tribute to the patriotic and political poems and essays from Walt Whitman.