Original records created by the Library of Congress; revised and expanded by The Walt Whitman Archive and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries. Encoded Archival Description completed with the assistance of the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the University of Nebraska Research Council, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
This catalog was created from the original finding aid created by the Library of Congress and digital images created by the The Walt Whitman Archive. The original papers are held at the Library of Congress.
The Feinberg-Whitman Collection includes materials relating to Walt Whitman's life and his literary career. Whitman's method of composition can be seen through a wide variety of material in the collection, including handwritten manuscript drafts, edited proofs and offprints, notebooks, diaries, and commonplace books. Materials in the collection illustrate Whitman's development as a writer and provide a strong foundation for scholarship in multiple areas of investigation.
In addition to a strong focus on Whitman's work, the collection also provides documents that relate to his personal life, including correspondence among family, friends, and colleagues. The correspondence includes several hundred letters written by Whitman as well as those he received. The collection also contains photographs and personal artifacts, such as Whitman's walking stick.
Charles Feinberg's correspondence relating to the quarterly Walt Whitman Review, documents pertaining to selected publications about Whitman, and items that detail exhibits based on items from the collection are also included. The collection also includes the papers of Richard Maurice Bucke, Charles E. Feinberg, John H. Johnston, William Douglas O'Connor, and Horace and Anne Montgomerie Traubel.
This catalog includes item-level descriptions of only those documents deemed poetry and/or prose manuscripts.
Charles Evan Feinberg was born on September 27, 1899 in London, England. He moved with his family to Peterborough, Ontario, Canada in his youth. As one of Samuel and Jane Stocker Feinberg's eight children, Feinberg began working at age twelve to help support his family. His formal education ended after the seventh grade, but he continued to educate himself independently, and he developed a keen interest in American literature, including,most significantly, Walt Whitman. He first read Whitman's poetry in William M. Rossetti's American Poems, and he began constructing his vast Whitman collection at age seventeen with the purchase of a letter for $7.50 (a third of Feinberg's weekly income).
Feinberg emigrated to the United States in 1923 and found a home in Detroit, Michigan. His work in the home heating oil industry provided the resources necessary to develop and expand his Whitman collection. Feinberg purchased letters, postcards, notebooks, and other items created by Whitman, which document the poet's life and literary career. His efforts resulted in the largest and most comprehensive Whitman collection in the world. In addition to Whitman materials, Feinberg also collected Judaica and the works of many other eminent writers, including Robert Frost.
Feinberg's independent work as a book collector and scholar earned him honorary doctorates in humane letters from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, the University of Detroit, and St. Thomas University in Miami, and the S. Y. Agnon Gold Medal for intellectual achievement from Hebrew University. He wrote articles on Whitman and regularly guest-lectured in college classrooms.
Feinberg, who claimed to be a "custodian, not a possessor" of his vast collection, variously sold and donated the materials in this collection over a number of years. He died in 1988.
For additional biographical information, see "Walt Whitman", by Ed Folsom and Kenneth M. Price, and the chronology of Whitman's Life.
