Content:
This notebook consists almost entirely of prose. However, the ideas and language developed throughout the notebook can be linked to a number of poems that appeared in
Leaves of Grass
, including "Song of Myself," "Great are the Myths" (ultimately shortened to a few lines and titled "Youth, Day, Old Age, and Night"), "Faces," "The Sleepers," and "To Think of Time," versions of which appeared in
Leaves of Grass
in 1855. One manuscript passage is similar to a passage in the preface to the 1855 edition. Thus, this notebook was almost certainly written before that date. Content from the first several paragraphs of this notebook was also used slightly revised in "Song of the Open Road," first published in the 1856 edition of
Leaves
as "Poem of the Road."
Content:
Whitman probably drafted this manuscript in the early 1850s as he was preparing materials for the first (1855) edition of
Leaves of Grass
. The manuscript includes lines that relate to the prose preface and to several of the poems in that edition, including the poems eventually titled "Song of Myself," "To Think of Time," and "A Song for Occupations." The manuscript also includes lines that relate to the manuscript poem "Pictures,"" which probably dates to the mid- to late 1850s. Notes about the arrangement and production of the 1855 edition of
Leaves of Grass
are written on the back of this manuscript.
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
. The lines are similar to lines in the first and third poems in that edition, eventually titled "Song of Myself" and "To Think of Time." Similar draft lines also appear in "Talbot Wilson," an early notebook (loc.00141). On the verso (loc.07869) is a draft of a piece of journalism published on October 20, 1854.
Content:
The echo of the phrase "vegetables and minerals" in the third poem of the first edition of
Leaves of Grass
(1855) suggests the possibility that Whitman drafted this manuscript in the early 1850s, as he was composing the poems that were published there. It is also possible, however, that the manuscript is unrelated to the first edition and was written during a slightly later period.
Content:
Whitman probably drafted this manuscript in the early 1850s, as he was preparing materials for the first (1855) edition of
Leaves of Grass
. The manuscript features draft lines of the third poem in that edition, eventually titled "To Think of Time."
On the back of this leaf (tul.00011) are notes toward a poem about "a perfect school."
Whitman Archive Title: Are the prostitutes nothing
Content:
This manuscript includes a line beginning "Are the prostitutes nothing?" which is a draft of a line from the third poem in the 1855 edition of
Leaves of Grass
, eventually titled "To Think of Time." The words "attraction of gravity," included in a crossed-out line in this manuscript, appear in two contexts in the 1855 edition of
Leaves of Grass
. The closest in meaning to its use in this manuscript is in the poem later titled "Great Are the Myths": "It cannot be varied by statutes, any more than love, pride, the attraction of gravity, can" (1855, p. 251). "Great Are the Myths" was ultimately shortened to a few lines and published as "Youth, Day, Old Age, and Night" in the 1881
Leaves of Grass
. On the reverse (duk.00032) is also an early version of a part of "Great Are the Myths."
Whitman Archive Title: Understand that you can have
Content:
Although no specific lines from this manuscript can be directly tied to any of Whitman's published work, the language and ideas are similar to certain sections of the prose preface to the 1855 edition of
Leaves of Grass
, as well as to the poem eventually titled "Song of Myself," suggesting that this manuscript may have been written around that time. Wording in this manuscript is also similar to a line in the 1855 poem eventually titled "To Think of Time." A note written by Richard Maurice Bucke, one of Whitman's literary executors, dates the manuscript to 1855 or 1856 (
Notebooks and Unpublished Prose Manuscripts
, ed. Edward F. Grier [New York: New York University Press, 1984], 1:222).
