Content:
The thirty-first surface in this manuscript notebook contains a note "for
Preface" about "gossiping in the candle light" that resonates with the
beginning of the second paragraph of the article "My Book and I," published in the
Lippincott's Monthly Magazine
in January 1887. This same passage also appeared one year later
in "A Backward Glance O'er Travel'd
Roads," published within
November
Boughs
(1888) and later included in
Leaves of
Grass
(1891-1892). The manuscript also contains a series of trial titles
that Whitman was possibly considering when preparing
Specimen Days & Collect
(1882-1883). The thirty-fifth leaf
contains a draft for a poem, including the deleted line "Away from houses,
reading, art" that resembles the second line in the poem "A Clear Midnight," published in
Leaves of
Grass
(1881-1882) and retained thereafter.
