Content:
Draft of the poem that would be published as "O Captain! My Captain!" in 1865, titled here "My Captain." On the verso of one page is a
portion of "A March in the
Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown" with a line through
it.
Content:
A signed, dated, handwritten copy of "O Captain! My Captain!," which was published first in 1865. The manuscript was recopied by Whitman,
without changes from the version published in 1881, at the
request of John Hay, who wrote Whitman in 1887 to request
an autograph copy of the poem. The manuscript is stored with a cover letter from Whitman to Hay, which requests payment of $22. A letter from Hay to Whitman dated
March 12,
1887
, acknowledges receipt of the manuscript and sends
a check for thirty dollars in payment. An image of the manuscript's verso is currently unavailable.
Whitman Archive Title: o the bleeding drops of red
Content:
Handwritten notes and corrections on a printed copy of the poem "O Captain! My Captain!" Although the poem was first published in the
Saturday Press
on
November 4, 1865
and later included in
Sequel to Drum-Taps
(1865-66), the corrections on this particular copy were made in early 1888, when the poem was reprinted in the
Riverside Literature Series
, Number 32 (January 1888). On the verso is a note from Whitman to the publishers of the
Riverside Literature Series
concerning corrections to be made to their printed version of the poem.
Content:
A manuscript copy of "O Captain! My Captain!," with a brief handwritten note at the bottom. On June 12, 1890 Whitman sent this copy, along with a letter, to Charles Aldrich, a former Iowa State Representative and the founder of the Iowa State Historical Department. "O Captain! My Captain!" was originally published in the
Saturday Press
on November 4, 1865 before ultimately being moved to the "Memories of President Lincoln" cluster of
Leaves of Grass
(1881-82). For a detailed description of Whitman's connection to Aldrich, see Ed Folsom, "Walt Whitman at Iowa,"
Books at Iowa
39 (November 1983), 17-37.
Content:
"O Captain! My Captain!"
was written in response to the death of Abraham Lincoln and first published
on November 4, 1865 in the
New-York Saturday Press
. It would later be reprinted in
Sequel to Drum-Taps
(1865) and then again, with slight revisions, in
Passage to India
(1871) and
Leaves of Grass
(1881-82). This particular
manuscript was written out by Whitman for Dr. S. Weir Mitchell (a prominent
author and doctor) at the request of Horace Howard Furness, for the amount
of one-hundred dollars. A note on the back of the manuscript in Mitchell's
hand says, "To give Walt a little money I offered for a gentleman 100$ for
an autograph copy of My Captain—I pin it to Furness note April 1890." This
manuscript differs slightly from the first printing, but agrees with that in
Leaves of Grass
, 1881-82, with one
exception: In the penultimate line, Whitman has probably mistakenly
written "dead" instead of "deck."
Content:
A handwritten version of "O
Captain! My Captain!" presumably re-penned by request and
presented to well-known doctor and author S. Weir Mitchell by Whitman on April 30, 1890. The poem was, in
turn, given to Daniel Coit Gilman in
1894; the Johns Hopkins University library holds
the correspondence between Gilman and Mitchell discussing this exchange.
