Walt Whitman Works Books
Not many people know that Walt Whitman—arguably the preeminent American poet of the nineteenth century—began his literary career as a novelist. Franklin Evans, or The Inebriate: A Tale of the Times was his first and only novel. Published in 1842, during a period of widespread temperance activity, it became Whitman’s most popular work during his lifetime, selling some twenty thousand copies. The novel tells the rags-to-riches story of Franklin Evans, an innocent young man from the Long Island countryside who seeks his fortune in New York City. Corrupted by music halls, theaters, and above all taverns, he gradually becomes a drunkard. Until the very end of the tale, Evans’s efforts to abstain fail, and each time he resumes drinking, another series of misadventures ensues. Along the way, Evans encounters a world of mores and conventions rapidly changing in response to the vicissitudes of slavery, investment capital, urban mass culture, and fervent reform. Although Evans finally signs a temperance pledge, his sobriety remains haunted by the often contradictory and unsettling changes in antebellum American culture. The editors’ substantial introduction situates Franklin Evans in relation to Whitman’s life and career, mid-nineteenth-century American print culture, and many of the developments and institutions the novel depicts, including urbanization, immigration, slavery, the temperance movement, and new understandings of class, race, gender, and sexuality. This edition includes a short temperance story Whitman published at about the same time as he did Franklin Evans , the surviving fragment of what appears to be another unfinished temperance novel by Whitman, and a temperance speech Abraham Lincoln gave the same year that Franklin Evans was published.
In 1852, young Walt Whitman—a down-on-his-luck housebuilder in Brooklyn—was hard at work writing two books. One would become one of the most famous volumes of poetry in American history, a free-verse revelation beloved the world over, Leaves of Grass . The other, a novel, would be published under a pseudonym and serialized in a newspaper. A short, rollicking story of orphanhood, avarice, and adventure in New York City, Life and Adventures of Jack Engle appeared to little fanfare. Then it disappeared. No one laid eyes on it until 2016, when literary scholar Zachary Turpin, University of Houston, followed a paper trail deep into the Library of Congress, where the sole surviving copy of Jack Engle has lain waiting for generations. Now, after more than 160 years, the University of Iowa Press is honored to reprint this lost work, restoring a missing piece of American literature by one of the world’s greatest authors, written as he verged on immortality.
Resist much, obey little The Complete Poems A work in progress through over four decades, Leaves of Grass contains poetry that spans the human element from the perspective of both the mind and the body. Many 19th century critics derided Whitman's poetry and during this time Leaves of Grass was considered controversial. From the year of its first publication in 1855 where only 12 poems were included, Whitman added more poetry to his collection until he published the final version of over 400 poems weeks before he died in 1892. Since Whitman's death, Leaves of Grass has been elevated as one of the most important American pieces of poetry, and to this day, many groups and movements have used Whitman's work as a means to further social and political change.
One of Walt Whitman's most loved and greatest poems, "Song of Myself" is an optimistic and inspirational look at the world. Originally published as part of "Leaves of Grass" in 1855, "Song of Myself" is as accessible and important today as when it was first written. Read "Song of Myself" and enjoy a true poetic masterpiece.
Written by Walt Whitman under the pseudonym Mose Velsor, and originally published in the New York Atlas between 1858-1860, Manly Health and Training is a series of Whitman essays on topics such as diet, exercise, aging, stress, and medicine. These previously unknown Whitman essays were rediscovered in the summer of 2015.
"O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won..." O'Captain, My Captain is an extended matephor written by Walt Whitman in 1865 about the death of U.S. president Abraham Lincoln . The work was popular and critically well received on publication, soon becoming Whitman's first to be anthologized as well as the most popular during his lifetime. It was one of the four poems he wrote about the death of the president, alongside When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd , Hush'd Be the Camps To-day , and This Dust was Once the Man . Walt Whitman was an American poet, essayist, journalist, and humanist. He was a part of the transition between Transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse.
Drum Taps is a collection of poems written by the renowned American poet Walt Whitman during the American Civil War. The book was first published in 1865 and contains some of Whitman's most famous and moving works, including ""O Captain! My Captain!"" which was written in response to the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.The poems in Drum Taps reflect Whitman's experiences and observations during the war, as well as his deep empathy for the soldiers who fought and died on both sides. The collection includes poems about the horrors of battle, the pain of separation from loved ones, and the courage and sacrifice of those who served.In addition to its historical significance, Drum Taps is also notable for its innovative use of free verse and its celebration of the common man. Whitman's style and subject matter were groundbreaking for their time, and his influence can be seen in the work of many later poets.Overall, Drum Taps is a powerful and moving collection that offers a unique perspective on one of the most significant events in American history. It remains a classic of American literature and a testament to the enduring power of poetry to capture the human experience.The brigade of Virginia and Maryland have march'd forth to intercept the enemy, They are cut off, murderous artillery from the hills plays upon them, Rank after rank falls, while over them silently droops the flag, Baptized that day in many a young man's bloody wounds, In death, defeat, and sisters', mothers' tears.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.
Leave time for wonder. Walt Whitman's "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" is an enduring celebration of the imagination. Here, Whitman's wise words are beautifully recast by New York Times #1 best-selling illustrator Loren Long to tell the story of a boy's fascination with the heavens. Toy rocket in hand, the boy finds himself in a crowded, stuffy lecture hall. At first he is amazed by the charts and the figures. But when he finds himself overwhelmed by the pontifications of an academic, he retreats to the great outdoors and does something as universal as the stars themselves... he dreams.
Written in the aftermath of the American Civil War during the ferment of national Reconstruction, Walt Whitman’s Democratic Vistas remains one of the most penetrating analyses of democracy ever written. Diagnosing democracy’s failures as well as laying out its vast possibilities, Whitman offers an unflinching assessment of the ongoing social experiment known as the United States. Now available for the first time in a facsimile of the original 1870–1871 edition, with an introduction and annotations by noted Whitman scholar Ed Folsom that illuminate the essay’s historical and cultural contexts, this searing analysis of American culture offers readers today the opportunity to argue with Whitman over the nature of democracy and the future of the nation. Living in Washington, D.C., where Congress granted male African Americans the right to vote nearly five years before the fifteenth amendment extended that right across the nation, and working for the office charged with enforcing the new civil rights amendments to the Constitution, Whitman was at the volatile center of his nation’s massive attempt to reconstruct and redefine itself after the tumultuous years of civil war. In the enduring cultural document that Democratic Vistas has become, the great poet of democracy analyzes the role that literature plays in the development of a culture, the inevitable tensions between the “democratic individual” and the “democratic nationality,” and the corrosive effects of materialism on the democratic spirit. His own conflicting racial biases notwithstanding, Whitman in Democratic Vistas offers his most eloquent and extended articulation of the beckoning American democratic future. At a time when the nation has elected a president whom Whitman could never have imagined, his controversial and provocative book is a timely reminder of those occasions when we experience the expansion of America’s democratic dream.
Walt Whitman (1819-1892) contributed to the greatest prose of American letters with Democratic Vistas, now considered a classic discussion of the theory of democracy and its possibilities. In this essay he protests the unrestrained materialism, greed, corruption and spiritual failure of what, two years later, Mark Twain would label "The Gilded Age." Whitman criticizes America for its "mighty, many-threaded wealth and industry" that mask an underlying "dry and flat Sahara" of soul. He calls for a new kind of literature to revive the American population: "Not the book needs so much to be the complete thing, but the reader of the book does." Whitman was one of the few writers to keep the Emersonian faith in individual and cultural regeneration after the Civil War.
Walt Whitman experienced the agonies of the Civil War as a dedicated volunteer throughout the conflict in Washington's overcrowded, understaffed military hospitals. This superb collection of his poems, letters, and prose from the war years, filled with the sights and sounds of war and its ugly aftermath, expresses a vast and powerful range of emotions. Among the poems include here, first published in Drum-Taps (1865) and Sequel to Drum-Taps (1866), are a number of Whitman's most famous works: "O Captain! My Captain!" "The Wound-Dresser," "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," and "Come Up from the Fields, Father." The letters and prose selections—including Whitman’s musings on the publication of his works and the wounded men he tended as well as his impressions of President Abraham Lincoln traveling around Washington—offer keen insights into an extraordinary era in American history.
Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
Originally published in 1904 and republished by City Lights in 1970, this exciting essay is again being placed in the hands of a new generation of writers and readers. In these notes to a lecture never given, Whitman exhorts his readers to explore the potential of an original American language, to practice a great democracy of words: "words that would be welcomed by the nation, being of the national blood--words that would give that taste of identity and locality which is so dear to literature."
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Walt Whitman (1819-92) is the authentic voice of democratic America. After a childhood in Brooklyn, he spent many years in and around Manhattan and Washington, where he witnessed troops returning from the Civil War and tended wounded soldiers in the camp hospitals. Whitman's broad humanity, his love of cities (especially Manhattan), his sympathy with all conditions of people, and his visionary - even prophetic - sense of the reality of the American dream make him as much a poet for our time as he was for the time of the American Civil War and its aftermath. This selection of courageous and consoling poems focuses on Whitman's vision of democracy, his love of Manhattan, his sense of the future - and of the community of peoples of this earth.
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
THE TYPE WAS SET BY HAND AT THE STRAWBERRY-HILL PRESS AND THE BOOK WAS PRINTED BY THEM IN THE MONTH OF FEBRUARY, NINETEEN HUNDRED AND TWENTY SEVEN. ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-FIVE COPIES ARE PRINTED ON HAND MADE PAPER. THIS IS COPY NUMBER 123
In December of 1862, having read his brother's name in a casualty list, Walt Whitman rushed from Brooklyn to the war front, where he found his brother wounded but recovering. But Whitman also found there a "new world," a world dense with horror and revelation. Memoranda During the War is Whitman's testament to the anguish, heroism, and terror of the Civil War. The book consists of journal entries extending from Whitman's arrival on the front in 1862 through to the war's conclusion in 1865. Whitman details his encounters with soldiers and doctors, meditates on particular battles and on the meanings of the war for the nation, and recounts his wordless though peculiarly intimate public exchanges with President Lincoln, a man Whitman saw often on the streets of Washington and by whom he was deeply fascinated. The book offers an astounding amalgam of death portraits, anecdotes of battle, last words, messages to distant loved ones, and remarkably restrained and muted descriptions of pain, dismemberment, and dying--all of it, however grim, suffused with Whitman's undiminished enthusiasm and affection for these young soldiers. And throughout, we find Whitman laboring with heroic determination to sustain and nourish his once-ardent faith in America and American life, even as the nation unleashed unprecedented violence upon itself.
This is a collection of Whitman's sexually and emotionally daring poetry, which challenged his Victorian readers and is still as lively and potent today.
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
Discover How Whitmans Spiritual Life and Vision Can Enlighten Your Own Whitmans collected poems and prose are not an object or icon to be gazed upon or revered but a transparency we look through to see ourselves with greater clarity, excitement, and meaning. They wake us up to our potential, to learning about and from ourselves. To experience his writing is to experience ourselves more deeply. from the Preface by Gary David Comstock Walt Whitman was the most innovative and influential poet of the nineteenth century. The self-proclaimed American Bard, Whitman challenged his contemporaries to resist conforming to society and shocked them with his embrace of the sensual. But beneath his manifesto for social revolution lies a vigorous call for spiritual revolution as well. This beautiful sampling of Whitmans most important poetry from Leaves of Grass , and selections from his prose writings, offers a glimpse into the spiritual side of his most radical themeslove for country, love for others, and love of Self. Whitman seeks to tear down the belief that the spiritual resides only in the religious and embraces the idea that nothing is more divine than humankind, nothing greater than the individual soul. Rich with passion, reverence, and wonder, this unique collection offers insight into Whitmans quest for self-discovery, which involved an ongoing mystical experience of the world. Though seemingly personal, his verse speaks to universal harmony and universal love, optimism and joy, and celebrates the outwardly mundane details of life through words electrified with love and spirit.
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Excerpt from The Poetry of the Future Such for an off-hand summary of the mighty three that now, by the women, men, and young folk of the fifty millions given these States by their late census, have been and are more read than all others put together.
Walt Whitman's visionary manifesto, visually reimagined Carefully culled to about one third of its original length, this version provides the perfect introduction to Whitman's most expansive and audacious poem. Combined with 27 illustrations, the book explores Whitman's own exuberant, witty, playful, transcendent theory of everything, beginning with "a spear of summer grass." Only moderately well-recognized in his time, Whitman is now regarded as the first and possibly greatest of American poets. As Harold Bloom said, "Walt Whitman is your imaginative father and mother, even if, like myself, you have never composed a line of verse." Printed on beautiful matte paper, this petite gift book is perfect for poetry and art lovers alike.The Obvious State Classics Collection is an evolving series of visually reimagined beloved works that speaks to contemporary readers. The pocket-sized, collectable editions feature the selected works of celebrated authors such as T. S. Eliot, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Sara Teasdale, and Henry David Thoreau.
This mid-19th-century poetic masterpiece intertwines the aftermath of President Lincoln's assassination with themes of loss, mourning, and the acceptance of death. The author weaves together vivid imagery of Lincoln's funeral procession with the natural world's beauty and the reconciling presence of nature. In this book, death is portrayed as a serene and welcome release, offering solace amidst the turmoil of war and grief. The author's profound insights on mortality and the resilience of the human spirit make this book a timeless meditation on the inevitable and the enduring power of memory.
As he was turning forty, Walt Whitman wrote twelve poems in a small handmade book he entitled “Live Oak, With Moss.” The poems were intensely private reflections on his attraction to and affection for other men. They were also Whitman's most adventurous explorations of the theme of same-sex love, composed decades before the word “homosexual” came into use. This revolutionary, extraordinarily beautiful and passionate cluster of poems was never published by Whitman and has remained unknown to the general public―until now. New York Times -bestselling and Caldecott Award-winning illustrator Brian Selznick offers a provocative visual narrative of “Live Oak, With Moss,” and Whitman scholar Karen Karbiener reconstructs the story of the poetic cluster's creation and destruction. Walt Whitman's reassembled, reinterpreted Live Oak, With Moss serves as a source of inspiration and a cause for celebration.
In honor of the great American bard's bicentennial, a collection of his writing on his beloved Brooklyn. Walt Whitman lived and worked and matured as an artist and thinker in Brooklyn, NY. The bustling port, full of life and diversity, expanded his mind and excited his senses. Whitman whole-heartedly embraced the life of Brooklyn in his poetry and prose -- most notably culminating Leaves of Grass , the definitive great American poem.
Nineteenth-century poet Walt Whitman employs the language of his day to express a wonder about the world below the sea that is timeless.