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Whitman Archive Title: I say that if once
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Whitman Archive ID: nyp.00101
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Repository: Catalog of the Walt Whitman Literary Manuscripts in The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library
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Repository Title: I say that if once
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Date: 1850s
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Genre: prose, poetry
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Physical Description: 1 leaf, handwritten
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View Images:
1
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Content:
The paper and ink, as well as the appearance of a transcription of this manuscript along with transcriptions of other early manuscripts in the "Notes on the Meaning and Intention of 'Leaves of Grass'" section of
Notes and Fragments
(1899), edited by Richard Maurice Bucke, suggest Whitman probably drafted this manuscript in the 1850s. Bucke's transcription concludes with the following words, which do not currently appear on the manuscript: "where they fail of themselves" (55). In
The Regenerate Lyric
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), Elisa New attributes the manuscript to "the period when the first drafts of
Leaves of Grass
were taking shape" (112). An image of the back of the leaf is not currently available.
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