Content:
Lines from this manuscript were used in the preface to the 1855 edition of
Leaves of Grass
. The sentence that begins "The soul has that measureless pride..." also later became part of the poem "Song of Prudence." Because the manuscript has not been located it is difficult to speculate on the circumstances of its composition, but it was probably written before or early in 1855.
Content:
Early discussions of this notebook dated it in the 1840s, and the date associated with it in the Library of Congress finding aid is 1847. The cover of the notebook features a note calling it the "Earliest and Most Important Notebook of Walt Whitman." A note on leaf 27 recto includes the date April 19, 1847, and the year 1847 is listed again as part of a payment note on leaf 43 recto. More recently, however, scholars have argued that Whitman repurposed this notebook, and that most of the writing was more likely from 1853 to 1854, just before the publication of
Leaves of Grass
. Almost certainly Whitman began the notebook by keeping accounts, producing the figures that are still visible on some of the page stubs, and later returned to it to write the poetry and prose drafts. For further discussion of dating and the fascinating history of this notebook into the twentieth century, see Matt Miller,
Collage of Myself: Walt Whitman and the Making of Leaves of Grass
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010), 2–8. See also Andrew C. Higgins, "Wage Slavery and the Composition of
Leaves of Grass
: The
Talbot Wilson
Notebook,"
Walt Whitman Quarterly Review
20:2 (Fall 2002), 53–77. Scholars have noted a relationship between this notebook and much of the prose and poetry that appeared in the 1855 edition of
Leaves of Grass
. See, for instance, Edward Grier,
Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts
(New York: New York University Press, 1984), 1:53–82. The notebook was lost when Grier published his transcription (based on microfilm). The notebook features an early (if not the earliest) example of Whitman using his characteristic long poetic lines, as well as the "generic or cosmic or transcendental 'I'" that appears in
Leaves of Grass
(Grier, 1:55).
Content:
This manuscript is written on a green sheet used for the
endpapers of the first edition of the
Leaves of
Grass
(1855), an edition that
begins with a ten-page statement in prose, originally untitled and later
known generally as the 1855
Preface
. This manuscript seems to represent
an early attempt by Whitman to recast the 1855 prose
Preface
into poetry. The 1860–61 edition of
Leaves of Grass
introduced two new poems created in this way: "Poem of Many in One" (later "By Blue Ontario's Shore") and "Poem of the Last Explanation of Prudence" (later "Song of Prudence"). Neither of the published poems incorporates lines from this manuscript, though it and "Song of Prudence" are drawn from adjacent portions of the 1855 Preface.
