Content:
Because it comprises material that Whitman used in the first edition of
Leaves of Grass
, this notebook must date to sometime before mid-1855.Emory Holloway has posited several connections between passages in this notebook and specific lines in the 1855 edition. Although some of these connections are dubious, the notebook's series of drafts about the effects of music are clearly related to what ultimately became section 26 of "Song of Myself." See Emory Holloway, ed.,
The Uncollected Poetry and Prose of Walt Whitman
(Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1921), 2:83–86.
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Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts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:
Whitman probably drafted this manuscript in the early 1850s as he was composing the first (1855) edition of
Leaves of Grass
. It probably relates to the seventh poem in that edition, originally untitled, part of which eventually became "Song of the Answerer." The manuscript is collected in a bound volume with other manuscripts.
Content:
The second paragraph of this prose manuscript contains lines which appeared in a slightly altered form in the first poem of the 1855 edition of
Leaves of Grass
. The poem was later divided into numbered sections and titled "Song of Myself"; the lines here appeared in section 4. The second paragraph also bears a distant resemblance to a line in the poem eventually titled "Faces" and to a line in the poem eventually titled "Song of the Answerer." The reverse side of this manuscript leaf (duk.00007) contains lines related to other sections of "Song of Myself."
Content:
This manuscript includes notes that anticipate the preface to the first (1855) edition of
Leaves of Grass
. Images and phrases in the second paragraph of the first leaf are reminscent of lines in both the poem eventually titled "Song of Myself" and the poem eventually titled "I Sing the Body Electric." Another line on the first leaf appeared in a slightly different form in "Poem of The Singers, and of The Words of Poems" in the 1856 edition of
Leaves
(a poem later titled "Song of the Answerer"). The stated desire for "satisfiers" and "lovers" (found here on the bottom of the second leaf) appears in "Poem of Many in One," also first published in the 1856 edition and later titled "By Blue Ontario's Shore."
Content:
These pages were written by Whitman in the early to mid-1850s. William White described the pages as "torn from a tall notebook" (
Daybooks and Notebooks
[New York: New York University Press, 1978], 773–777). White noted a relationship between these pages and the poems "Who Learns My Lesson Complete?," "By Blue Ontario's Shore," "Song of the Answerer," and "There Was a Child Went Forth." Some of the ideas and language being worked out here also appear in the poem eventually titled "Song of Myself." For a discussion of the dating and importance of this notebook, see Matt Miller,
Collage of Myself: Walt Whitman and the Making of Leaves of Grass
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2010), 11–16.
Content:
Whitman likely wrote the building specifications on what is presented here as the last leaf of this notebook first, and then flipped the notebook over and wrote notes from the other direction. References to the
San Francisco
can be dated to sometime after January 1854. The cover of the notebook is labeled "Note Book Walt Whitman" in a hand that is not Whitman's. Selections and subjects from this notebook were used in the 1855 edition of
Leaves of Grass
, including phrases from the poems that would later be titled "Song of Myself" and "Song of the Answerer." See Edward Grier,
Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts
(New York: New York University Press, 1984), 1:113–117. Lines in this manuscript correspond to a line from the manuscript poem, unpublished in Whitman's lifetime, titled "Pictures": "And now a merry recruiter passes, with fife and drum, seeking who will join his troop." The first several lines of the poem (not including this line) were revised and published in
The American
in October 1880 as "My Picture-Gallery," a poem later included in
Leaves of Grass
as part of the "Autumn Rivulets" cluster (1881, p. 310).
Content:
This notebook, now lost, contains much draft material used in the 1855 edition of
Leaves of Grass
, in addition to a few images and phrasings that Whitman used in the second (1856) and third (1860) editions. As the folder title indicates, the notebook is currently represented by photocopied images of each page derived, apparently, from a microfilm of the original that was made in the 1930s prior to the notebook's disappearance from the collection during World War II. As Floyd Stovall has noted, the few datable references in this notebook (e.g., the fighting at Sebastopol during the Crimean War) are to events from about 1853 to late 1854, shortly before the first publication of
Leaves of Grass
. See Stovall, "Dating Whitman's Early Notebooks,"
Studies in Bibliography
24 (1971), 197–204. See also Edward Grier,
Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts
(New York: New York University Press, 1984), 1:138–155. Surfaces 9, 10, 54, and 55 bear passages that probably contributed to the first poem of the 1855 edition, eventually titled "Song of Myself," and other material, on surfaces 26, 46, 51, 54, and 58, is clearly linked to the evolution of that poem. A passage on surface 23 is also perhaps related to its development. Surfaces 11 and 12 both have material probably used as fodder for the poem "Song of the Answerer," first published as the seventh poem in the 1855
Leaves.
A brief passage on surface 12 possibly contributed to the poem first published in 1860 as the fourth of the "Chants Democratic" and later retitled "Our Old Feuillage." Surfaces 13 and 46 contain drafts of passages used in the second poem of 1855, later titled "A Song for Occupations." Material on surfaces 24 and 47 probably also contributed to this poem. Passages on surfaces 17, 18, 40, 42, and 45 are likely early drafts toward lines used in "Poem of the Sayers of the Words of the Earth" (1856), which later became "A Song of the Rolling Earth." Surface 18 also bears writing probably related to the twelfth and final poem of the 1855
Leaves,
later titled "Faces." On surfaces 18, 24, and 51 are lines that might represent draft material toward "I Sing the Body Electric" (first published as the fifth poem of the 1855
Leaves
). Other passages, on surfaces 47 and 55, are likely related to that poem; those on surfaces 36, 37, 44, 45, and 47 are certainly related. Ideas and images written on surfaces 20 and 46 are likely related to the poem "Song of the Open Road," which first appeared as "Poem of the Road," and a passage on surface 24 may also be related. Two passages on surface 21 were used in the tenth poem of the 1855
Leaves of Grass,
later titled "There Was a Child Went Forth." Surface 22 contains writing probably used in "Sun-Down Poem" (1856), titled "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" in later editions. Some of the writing on surface 24 might also have contributed to the development of that poem. Another passage on surface 22, as well as passages on surfaces 26, 47, and 60, are possibly related to the 1855 Preface. A different passage on surface 60 is clearly related to the Preface, and a passage on surface 45 is likely related to it. Two of the draft lines of poetry on surface 31 were used in the untitled third poem of the "Debris" cluster in the 1860 edition of
Leaves of Grass.
This poem was retitled "Leaflets" in 1867 and dropped from subsequent editions. The writing on surface 41 contributed to the 1856 "Poem of Salutation," which was eventually titled "Salut au Monde!" The jotting at the top of surface 43 is also likely connected to this poem.
Whitman Archive Title: [most poets finish single specimens of]
Content:
A group of several notes, all concerned with the general topics of the character and social position of the poet. The sentences pencilled at the top of the page contributed to the poem "Myself and Mine," first published in 1860 as "No. 10" in the "Leaves of Grass" cluster. The list of seven attributes that is written in the middle of the page formed the basis for a stanza of "Poem of The Singers, and of The Words of Poems," published in 1856 and later combined with one of the 1855 poems to become "Song of the Answerer." Pasted to the manuscript is a clipping, annotated and dated June 1856, about Hungarian literary nationalism, and at the bottom of the page are notes on the German poet Heinrich Heine.
Whitman Archive Title: Produce great persons and the producers
Content:
Manuscript and clipping. On one side of the manuscript leaf (see the first image linked above) are several prose
notes, including two versions of a paragraph that was later revised to
become a line in "Poem of Many
In One," published in
Leaves of Grass
(1856), and eventually titled "By Blue Ontario's Shore."
The phrase "savage and luxuriant," which appears toward the bottom of this
side, was used in Whitman's open letter to Emerson, published in an appendix
to the 1856
edition of
Leaves of Grass.
On the other side of the leaf is a partial draft of "Poem of The Singers, and of the
Words of Poems," also first published in 1856. In the final edition of
Leaves of Grass
this
and another poem, which had been included in every edition since 1855, were
combined to form "Song of the
Answerer." Whitman pasted at least two newspaper clippings on the
manuscript, one on each side. However, markings on both sides of the leaf indicate that Whitman potentially pasted a third, unidentified, newspaper clipping on this manuscript. One of these, which had covered Whitman's paragraphs but has since been detached, is included in the file; another is still pasted to the manuscript.
Whitman Archive Title: [Time always without break]
Content:
This manuscript contains two lines from Whitman's poem "Song of the Answerer." This fair copy was evidently
made for an admirer: it includes Whitman's autograph in large letters above the
lines "Camden New Jersey / March 14 1887—." The lines from the poem are quoted
without revision from the 1881 edition of
Leaves of Grass
, followed by the citation "(L of
Grass—p 137)," which refers to the 1881 system of pagination. These lines come
from the first verse paragraph of section 2 of the poem. This section began as the
independent composition "19—Poem of
The Singers, and of The Words of Poems" in 1856, after which it
underwent various changes in content, title, and position until being joined with
"Now List to My Morning
Romanza" in 1881.
